


Luminous Creatures

by celinamarniss



Series: Animalis [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: (because daemons), Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Animal Abuse, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Daemon Feels, Daemon Separation, Daemon Settling, Daemon Touching, Daemons, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Force Visions, Happy Ending, Identity Issues, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, background ensemble cast - Freeform, episodic, mara's abusive childhood, minor self-harm, original trilogy remix, the last command, thrawn trilogy remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23829331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celinamarniss/pseuds/celinamarniss
Summary: Mara has never been prouder when Asyr settles early. He shifts into the form of a night felinx when Mara is thirteen, a whole year early. It’s a good body for stealth, her trainers tell her, and praise them for it.Luke is the last of his friends to have his dæmon settle. Speculation drifts through his childhood.What sort of animal do you think your dæmon will choose?asked by adults with indulgent smiles and between children as their dæmons flit from form to from in impromptu races across the desert sand.
Relationships: Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker
Series: Animalis [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722373
Comments: 111
Kudos: 91
Collections: Star Wars Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All my gratitude to brilliant betas [verbose_vespertine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbose_vespertine/pseuds/verbose_vespertine) and [JediMordsith,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediMordsith/pseuds/JediMordsith) and to the talented [Lightningecho_s_path](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightningecho_s_path/pseuds/Lightningecho_s_path), who illustrated this story! Please go and take a look at the illustrations! 
> 
> Snippets of dialogue have been lifted from the Original Trilogy and from _The Thrawn Trilogy_ by Timothy Zahn and recontextualized for this story.
> 
> The concept of dæmons and all related lore is taken from the _His Dark Materials_ series by Phillp Pullman. Dæmons are physical manifestations of a person’s soul which take the form of an animal. Before puberty, a dæmon can transform into any animal imaginable, but after puberty, the dæmon “settles” into a single form for the rest of their life. The form the dæmon chooses is a reflection of their human’s personality. A dæmon’s gender is usually the opposite of its human; a human and dæmon pair with the same gender are rare. Dæmons are unable to move more than a few yards from their human unless they go through a process called “separation.” If a dæmon is killed, their human dies instantly as well. It is taboo to touch another person’s dæmon except under certain circumstances, though dæmons can freely interact with each other. 
> 
> I’ve made up my own rules for alien dæmons in the series.

Mara has never been prouder when Asyr settles early. Her tutors have carefully marked out schedules and timelines that account for every benchmark that Mara is expected to achieve, year by year. Those timelines had predicted that Asyr would settle when Mara was fourteen, but he shifts into the form of a night felinx when Mara is thirteen, a whole year early. It’s a good body for stealth, her trainers tell her, and praise them for it. 

There are night felinxes on the few Core Worlds that still have scraps of wilderness where wild creatures can hide. They’re rare, but not unheard of. There are a few in the Coruscant zoo, a place that Mara had only been a couple of times when she was very little, before it was deemed too frivolous an excursion for a young lady with her training regime. 

Asyr has a long face, long legs, sleek fur as dark as the void of space, and narrow ears that end in tufts of fur. His long tail ends in a puff of black fur flecked with white. His eyes are an exact match for hers. Mara has seen other  dæmon s on Coruscant that take the form of larger felinxes, but Asyr’s head is level with her hip, and she loves that she can place her hand between his ears as they stand side by side. Mara spends days running her hands over his short lustrous fur in a combination of awe and fierce love. 

She isn’t sure what triggered the shift from Asyr’s childish, unfixed state to the stately creature he will remain for the rest of their lives. Looking back, she recalls that the month before he settled, her instructors had increased her workload and lengthened her training hours. Mara had struggled to cope with her expanded schedule. She remembers feeling like she’d been dunked underwater, fighting against the exhaustion at the end of every day. Shortly before Asyr settled, they finally fell into a rhythm, adjusting to the steady, relentless pace of training and lessons. 

Among those lessons are the occasional session with her master, the Emperor. She has the latent talent for a secret ability that will allow, with years of special training, some of the powers that he has honed over a lifetime. Her talent is small, but he promises that he’ll train her to use it to the best of her ability, all the better to serve him. He plants his voice in her head, giving her the gift to hear him anywhere in the galaxy. For days afterwards, she feels like she’s floating along like a rainbow soapbubble, buoyed by the memory that he chose her—her alone—to hear his voice and train to be his Emperor’s Hand. 

* * *

“Now that Asyr has settled,” Kalen Adjo, Mara’s physical training instructor says, “we can begin the adult program. Mara, Asyr, this is Anja and Emil.” 

A trainer Mara has never seen before stands alongside Kalen. Anja is tall and lean, with hair so pale it looks white in the harsh lighting of the dojo. Her eyebrows and eyelashes disappear against her lightly tanned skin. Her  dæmon is a short-haired river felinx, sleek and grey, with wide webbed paws and strange double eyelids. 

“Emil will be teaching Asyr.” The words are no sooner out of Kalen’s mouth then Emil explodes into motion, leaping towards Asyr with claws and fangs extended. Asyr flips backward, tripping over his own feet. 

Anja watches placidly, not even flinching when Asyr swipes Emil’s side with his claws. Emil lunges for Asyr and Asyr barely manages to dart out of reach, but it doesn’t last long. He can’t shift into a larger or swifter animal as he’s accustomed to doing, and it throws him off balance. In seconds, Emil has Asyr pinned to the mats, tail flicking back and forth steadily. 

Mara feels weak and shaken. 

At a nod from Anja, Emil releases Asyr, who slinks back to Mara’s side, ears flat, radiating shame and disgust. Mara expects a dressing down and dreads Kalen’s disappointment, but her trainer looks pleased. 

“Emil will teach Asyr how to use his adult form—stealth, defense, how to fight and maim other dæmons. Anja will serve as your sparring partner.” 

They bow to each other, and the first lesson begins. 

* * *

“You want to kiss her,” Asyr accuses Mara as he sulkily cleans his coat. 

“No I don’t.” 

Asyr glares at her before turning his head to work at his paw with his teeth. “Yes, you do.” 

Asyr doesn’t like Emil. That doesn’t surprise her; he doesn’t like anyone’s dæmons. Mara worries about him being lonely. 

She doesn’t kiss Anja. When Anja pins her to the floor during a bout, Mara’s face goes red and her brain fuzzes out like a defective holo. It’s hard to focus on the lesson when she keeps staring at Anja’s lips or the curve of her breast under her workout shirt. 

But she doesn’t say anything. 

While Asyr grows agile and clever under Emil’s instruction, Mara learns new holds and throws, partnering with Anja under Kalen’s steady eye. Asyr still hates Anja’s  dæmon . On breaks between lessons, Mara asks Anja tentative questions about her routine and holofilm preferences—it’s good practice for intelligence gathering. Anja is serious about her training, and tells Mara she intends to compete in the Chandrillan Games in two years, and then apply for service in the military. There aren’t many women in the Emperor’s military, but Anja says that if anyone can make shock trooper, she can, and Mara has no doubt in her. Asyr ignores Emil, sitting as far away from him as possible, eyes narrowed to green slits. 

After months of practice, Emil judges Asyr capable on his own and Kalen deems this particular course of training complete. Anja and Emil are transferred back to their original dojo. 

Mara never sees her again. 

* * *

Luke is the last of his friends to have his  dæmon settle. 

When they were younger, it hadn’t even occurred to him to worry about  _ when _ Miré might settle, he only wondered what form she might take. Luke spends hours pouring over galactic bestiaries, wondering whether Miré will settle as a saber cat or a thranta or a more common Tatooine creature. 

The speculation drifts through his childhood.  _ What sort of animal do you think your dæmon will choose? _ asked by adults with indulgent smiles and between children as their dæmons flit from form to from in impromptu races across the desert sand. They’re just as likely to talk about a new holofilm or fall into a game of Tuskans and Stormtroopers, their dæmons morphing into large, war-like creatures. 

The topic gets kicked up again like a flurry of sand when Markus and Teni come to visit. Markus is related to him somehow; a second cousin of Beru’s who lives out near Mos Espa. Luke hates when Beru’s Mos Espa relatives come to visit. Beru and Owen insist that he has to play with them even though they’re all bullies, and every one of them is bigger and meaner than he is. 

Teni has recently settled into a dewback, squat and and leathery, with small, stupid black eyes. She’s smaller than a full-grown dewback, but still large enough to stand higher than Markus’s head. Markus is clearly proud of her, and shows her off as the other children from Anchorhead gather around. 

“I bet you’re jealous I got a dæmon this big,” Markus says as he strokes her side. 

“I don’t want a dewback dæmon,” Luke shrugs. Teni is slow and plodding and the dewback form suits her, but it would never suit Miré. 

Markus scoffs. “You should be so lucky.” 

Camie laughs.  “His dæmon’ll probably settle as a stink lizard. Or a worm,” she says, and sings, “Weemo Wormie, weemo Wormie.” 

Luke flings himself at Camie even though she’s taller than him and he knows he’ll be eating sand in a matter of minutes.  Miré leaps to his defense in the form of an anooba, and Camie’s Borus, who has never been all that imaginative, turns into a larger male anooba and swatts Miré down with his paw. 

The breath rushes out of Luke and he topples over. Camie doesn’t hesitate to use the opportunity to kick him. Luke doesn’t hate Camie—she’s just  _ Camie, _ and this is how she is—and he knows that she wouldn’t have kicked him at all if Markus hadn’t been watching. Markus laughs nastily. 

“Leave him alone,” Biggs calls. Japeta shifts into a dewback just as large as Teni and wedges herself between Miré and Borus. Luke rolls to his feet again and races away from the group, just to put some distance between himself and Markus. Miré turns into a small urusai and glides along behind him on leathery wings. 

He can hear Markus’s laugh tailing him over the sand. 

* * *

Luke grows taller than Camie, at least, though he’s shorter than most of the other boys in Anchorhead.  As the dæmons of the older children in Luke’s generation begin to settle, the question of  _ when _ and  _ what sort of animal _ becomes a constant topic of speculation. 

After the great drought, Fixer’s dæmon settles as a dwarf ronto. Biggs’s Japeta follows a year later.  She becomes a desert bird of prey, a tawny sand hawk with a long tail and a spattering of red feathers across her breast. Borus takes the form of a flat-faced tooka, the meanest tooka Luke has ever seen. 

Miré is the only one that doesn’t settle. She seems happy to flit from a jakrab to a scurrier to a sketto. Mimicking Japeta, she takes the form of a hawk and flies tight circles around Luke’s head, never more than the few yards—the bounds of the distance a dæmon can be separated from her human—and then minutes later she lumbers across the sand as miniature krayt dragon. 

Beru tells him not to worry. Miré will settle when she’s ready, she tells Luke. “She’ll know when it’s time.” 

  
  


* * *

There are more than a dozen throne rooms scattered throughout the Imperial Palace. Each one serves a different purpose, from grand staterooms that play host to delegations from far-off planets that wish to beg the Emperor’s favor, to amphitheaters where honors are bestowed on deserving servants of his Imperial Majesty. Every single one designed to glorify the grandeur of the Emperor. 

There are no windows in the Silver Throne Room, a long, dark chamber deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace. The black marble floors are shot through with streaks of white that gleam silver in the light that shines from fixtures set into the floor, beams reaching up the angular walls and disappearing into the dark. A set of tall folding screens the color of mist flank the silver throne on a short dias at one end of the room. The screens hide the room’s only other exit and the Crimson Guards that are never more than a few meters away from their Emperor. 

The throne itself is a work of art, unlike any other throne in the Emperor’s palace, a construction of silver tubes twisting around each other and into the vague shape of a chair. Mara thinks there’s something grotesque about the curving, bulbous lines of the throne, the metal coiled like a mass of maggots. The hall is designed for the Emperor to receive petitions from members of the Court, the long  promenade from the door to the throne giving the petitioner plenty of time to reflect on their reasons for taking up the Emperor’s time. 

Mara touches Asyr’s head, once, to steady herself before they begin their approach along the length of the hall. The throne room is just wide enough to allow courtiers and supplicants to line the walls and watch as the Emperor weighs each case brought before him, though none of them stand there now. Today the hall is empty except for her master, who sits implacably on his throne, and Lord Vader, a black shadow beside him. The only sound is the tap of her footsteps against the marble floor as she approaches the throne and the suck-hiss of Vader’s breath. 

No one has ever seen Vader’s  dæmon. 

Just being the presence of a human without a dæmon makes her skin crawl. Mara’s heard the stories; that Vader’s  dæmon was removed with cabalistic Sith alchemy, or that he’s a half-ghost who doesn’t have a dæmon at all—she’s not sure which story is more horrible. She prides herself on being able to hold her nerve even though every instinct in her body is telling her to run. 

Facing her terror of Vader is a worthy price to pay to be in the presence of her master; in his presence, Vader is inconsequential. He is the heart of the Empire, the source of all its great strength. Mara, even with her slight abilities, can sense the power contained within him, like staring into a black hole, a pulsing void that knows her better than she knows herself. 

She sinks to her knees before him. Beside her, Asyr drops to the ground as well, his head bent in a mirror to hers. 

“Mara, my dear.” 

She raises her head at his voice.  Beside her, Asyr quivers with excitement.

“I’ve called you here today for your final test.” 

She  _ knew _ —had somehow known from the moment she’d woken up—that _ this _ was the day, the day that she would prove herself worthy of the title her master had chosen for her— _ If _ she passes the final test. 

Silver glints in the Emperor’s hood as he steps down from the dias to stand in front of her. Nimué slinks onto his shoulder and dances elegantly onto his outstretched hand. A spindly leg extends to point at Mara, and a thrill rushes through her.  The light in her master’s eyes  _ must _ be pride. 

“I have been studying ancient texts,” her master contines. “Texts forbidden to anyone but myself—on the ways of the Jedi. The Jedi were cunning and corrupt, but they had unusual talents, not unlike we do.”

Mara feels a swell of pride at the word  _ we, _ though she knows her small talents can’t compare with the immense power of the Sith Master before her. 

“The texts indicate that some of these skills can be acquired by non-Jedi—under certain circumstances.” He pauses, letting the weight of his words rest in the air. 

“It is an experiment,” he confides in her. “A test. One that I hope you will be equal to.” He drops a hand near her face and she feels Nimué’s cold touch as a thin appendage rests against her cheek. “Are you ready to be tested, my child?” 

“Yes, my master,” she says, and although she doesn’t entirely understand what he means, she trusts him implicitly. 

“Good.” He withdraws Nimué and returns to his throne, hands folding over coiled armrests. The phantom spider dæmon disappears again in the folds of his hood. “You may stand.” 

She can feel Vader moving closer and hairs rise at the back of her neck. Asyr’s fur stands on end, but he keeps still at Mara’s side. 

“You will not move from that spot, Mara,” her master says, voice like stone. His eyes gleam golden from underneath the shadow of his hood. “No matter what happens.” 

Mara nearly cries out as Vader’s fist closes around the back of Aysr’s neck. Asyr thrashes in his grip, flinging his body back and forth in a futile attempt to break free. Vader ignores the dæmon thrashing in his hand. He turns and begins to walk away, down the long promenade. He doesn’t even flinch when Asyr digs his claws into the leather bracer on his arm and tears it away, revealing an unyielding metal skeleton beneath. 

Mara feels weak and dizzy, like her muscles have failed her and all the air is been sucked out of her lungs. 

_ He’s pulling them apart.  _

If the bond between them breaks, they’ll both die. 

This is the test. She must not move, even though every instinct in her screams to run to Asyr and rip Vader’s arm from its socket, no matter what it cost her. 

It’s the cost that keeps her frozen. It’s the weight of her Master’s presence behind her. She cannot fail him—she  _ will _ not fail him. It takes every ounce of that will to hold herself in place. 

The same weakness is affecting Aysr, and in response he goes limp in Vader’s grasp, flopping onto the floor and digging his claws into the marble. It barely slows Vader’s inexorable march down the hall, dragging her soul behind him. It feels as though Vader has thrust his hand into her chest and is tearing out her heart. 

As Asyr is pulled further and further away from her, she can feel a strange pressure building around her, as if the air itself is vibrating around her,  _ through _ her.  The tips of her fingers go numb.  For a few moments, she can sense unconsciousness swim up to her and she sways on her feet. 

_ “No,” _ she hears her master hiss from behind her. “Do  _ not _ pass out.” 

She can sense his presence—like a dark thundercloud, heavy with the smell of sulfur—on the edge of her awareness as she pulls herself back from the edge of unconsciousness. Mara’s knees give out, and the sharp pain as they hit the floor helps to keep her alert and her head high. She mustn’t move from her position—she mustn’t take her eyes off Asyr for even a second. 

The pain in her chest is almost unbearable. 

Aysr begins to scream, a piercing howl that makes all the small hairs on the back of her neck stiffen in response. Her breath comes in rough gasps. She presses her fist to her mouth, biting down so hard the taste of copper washes against her tongue. 

Vader reaches the end of the hall and stands underneath the arch that frames the entrance to the throne room. Sculpted by the same artist as the throne, the arch’s silver tubes seem to seethe and writhe in Mara’s watery vision. She can see Asyr’s eyes gleam across the distance, full of rage and grief. 

A strange feeling courses through her, as the intense pain in her chest eases abruptly as rubber being snapped. She lets out a hiccuping cry, for fear that her connection to Asyr has been severed forever.  _ No, she can still feel him _ —alive and frightened and angry. There’s a distance to their bond now, as if a shadow has moved between them. The absolute clarity of the connection between their minds gone hazy, precise edges blurred. 

Vader drops Asyr to the floor. For a second, Asyr lies at Vader’s feet, stunned, and then he scrambles up and clears the hall in a black blur. Within moments, he leaps into Mara’s arms and they collapse together to the floor, Mara sobbing into his fur. 

Long minutes pass before she manages to pull herself together and kneel before her master again. Shame nearly swamps her; shame at her display of emotion and loss of control, shame at her tear-streaked face and bloody hands. She fists her hands to hide their shaking, and Asyr leans into her shoulder as support. 

Vader has returned to his master’s side, expressionless mask tilted down to gaze at them. His prosthetic hand, the hand that had torn Asyr away from her, hangs loosely at his side, the bare metal glinting in the light. She has never hated anyone as much as she hates him in that moment. 

“Well done, my child,” her master says, as he looks down on her with pleasure and pride. 

That’s all that matters. 

The lines in his face crease into paternal concern. “I know how difficult that was for you. You have achieved something remarkable today. The bond between you and your dæmon has been permanently altered. You will now be able to separate from your dæmon—for great distances and for as long as I command it.” His face crinkles in a tight-lipped smile. “Do you understand how valuable you are to me now?” 

“Yes, master.” 

“Good.  _ Good. _ Rise.” 

Mara does. The Emperor raises his hand in benediction, and Mara’s mouth goes dry. 

“Mara Jade,” he intones. “You are now the Emperor’s Hand. Extension of my voice and will throughout the galaxy.” 

_ The Emperor’s Hand. _ She should be suffused with victory, high on the triumph of earning the title she’d been working toward for most of her life. Instead she feels hollow, like there’s a crack running through her and everything she cared about has drained away. 

_ The Emperor’s Hand. _ It rings through her head, over and over. She faced the sacrifice of her bond with Asyr, and came out of her trials with her master’s favor, with a secret power that only belongs to them. 

It should be enough. 

She is the Emperor’s Hand, and no one can take that from her. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


“He’s here!” Miré cries, leaping into the air. She changes from a sand lizard to a peko-peko in midair, darting above his head to see over the tall Rodian bartering with the flint dealer in front of them. Luke has to lean around the Rodian, stretching out sideways until he catches a glimpse of Old Ben on the other side of the marketplace. 

The wizard has his hood up, shading his head and face from the sun, but there’s no doubt that he’s Old Ben from the Dune Sea. His dæmon, riding on his shoulder, is unmistakable. Luke doesn’t know her name. Her long, spindly legs are folded under pure white feathers. Hidden underneath that downy white are pinion feathers in iridescent shades—gold and bronze and shimmering red. There are iridescent notches on her long sharp beak as well, that catch the light when she turns her head, looking this way and that, her four eyes ever alert as Old Ben glides from stall to stall. She has a long, elegant neck, like some of the water birds in Luke’s dæmon bestiary, though he’s never been able to identify her species. Not a creature was ever native to Tatooine, nor one that belongs in the desert. 

Luke and Miré dawdle at a lampta stall, and then duck behind a leather goods vendor. They keep their distance as they follow Old Ben through the marketplace. Miré shifts into the same bird form as Ben’s dæmon and alights on Luke’s shoulder, mimicking the other dæmon, though not before glancing around to make sure Uncle Owen isn’t watching them. Uncle Owen wouldn’t approve of their interest in the old wizard. 

“I wouldn’t mind if you kept that form,” Luke tells her, running a finger along her beak. 

“Maybe I will,” she says, preening. She spreads a wing and the multicolored feathers gleam in the sunlight. But she shifts back into the shape of brightly blue peko-peko minutes later. 

She constantly transforms into birds, insects, small winged reptiles—anything that can fly. Sometimes when Luke needs to get away from the homestead, he goes out rock climbing on the bluffs on the edge of the Jundland Wastes. He and Miré sit on one of the wide ledges and watch the urusai glide on updrafts for hours. He’s always been fascinated by anything that can take flight, and when he's not working on the old skyhopper in his Uncle’s garage, he usually has his gaze above the horizon, watching the sky. Dreaming of following his father’s footsteps and traveling to the stars. 

Aunt Beru comments on it more than once. Uncle Owen doesn’t like it, Luke can tell. 

Everyone’s convinced that when Miré finally chooses a permanent form, she’ll settle as some sort of bird. The other teenagers have already taken to calling him “birdbrain,” and while Luke isn’t thrilled about that, he likes the idea of Miré choosing a bird and he knows that she does too. 

But it isn’t the shape of Ben’s dæmon that really interests Luke. It’s a rumor that Miré has heard, and that she and Luke have witnessed. Aunt Dama’s Lularian once told Miré that Old Ben’s dæmon could use wizard magic to travel great distances from her human. It sounded like something out of a bedtime story, a fable that Aunt Beru used to tell them before bed. 

Then one day, out on the salt flats at the edge of the farm, Luke spotted Obi-Wan riding an eopie off in the distance. Riding alone. Luke watched him through his battered old macrobinoculars for a quarter of an hour until he spotted the old man’s dæmon, gliding in from the east. Even her altitude was far beyond what Miré could manage, and it was clear that she had flown at least a mile away from Old Ben. 

The terrible pain that overtakes Luke and Miré when they attempt to separate more than a few yards doesn’t seem to affect Old Ben, and his dæmon is free to fly a significant distance from her other half. Luke hasn’t figured out how they do it, but he’s dying to know. 

When Old Ben is drawn into a conversation with Old Lady Meru, Miré transforms into a bright green winged lizard and flits off, darting through the air to land on a barrel near their quarry. The other dæmon turns toward her, blinking two of her four eyes, and extends her long neck in Miré’s direction. Miré bobs her lizard head as she speaks and the bird dæmon answers. Old Ben ignores them. 

After a brief, hushed conversation, Miré leaps into the air and glides back over to Luke. “Her name is Penelope,” she says. 

“Penelope.” The strange name feels odd in Luke’s mouth. 

“She’s a Bas í river egret from a planet called Stewjon. She wouldn’t tell me anything else. She was nice, though.” 

Luke didn’t really expect Ben dæmon to reveal the wizard’s secret, but he’s determined to figure it out, one way or another. 

* * *

  
  


“I don’t like this,” Miré says. She’s taken the form of an animal covered in red plates like armor, large enough to block the door of the skyhopper. 

“We won’t know until we try,” Luke says. 

They’ve been testing the bond between them all month. Each day Luke runs a short distance from Miré, to the edge of the link, to see if the pain of separation lessons with practice. It doesn’t. Luke stands with tears in his eyes until they can’t stand it anymore, and Miré flies into his arms. 

If repetition doesn’t make it any easier, what will? Will forcing a separation increase the distance between them permanently? Loosen their bond—or something worse? 

The only way to find out is to test it. 

After a frustrating month getting nowhere, Luke decides that they need to try something a little more drastic. He can  _ force _ the distance between them. Fly the skyhopper beyond the range of the bond, leaving Miré behind in the desert. If Luke’s sealed in the skyhopper, neither of them will be able to back out of the experiment at the last moment. He picks a spot out in the Dune Sea, far enough away from the homestead that they won’t be disturbed, and Miré argues half-heartedly all the way there. They’ve made up their mind, and even though she can’t help voicing their doubts and fear, she knows she can’t convince him otherwise. 

He lands the skyhopper and plants a small marker where Miré will stand, so that he can measure the exact distance later—a small stab at testing the process in a scientific manner. It’s when he turns back to the skyhopper that he finds Miré between him and the door. 

“It’s going to hurt,” she says in a small voice. 

“I know,” Luke says. He throws his arms around her neck. “But we can handle it. I know we can.” 

He coaxes her away from the door. At first she goes, grumbling, lumbering away from the door under his guiding hand—but then she transforms, quick as a jump to lightspeed, into a large lizard and skitters away from him. Ignoring the pang at her rejection, he turns back to the skyhopper and steps inside the small cockpit. There’s a sudden scuffle as Miré throws herself at the door to the skyhopper right as Luke reaches over to pull it shut, forcing him to shove her bodily away. 

(That moment will haunt his dreams for months). 

Luke straps himself into the pilot seat and starts the ignition sequence, flipping switches with shaking fingers. He can sense Miré circling the skyhopper, backing off as the engine revs. Before liftoff, she darts in front of the vehicle, scratching and beating her wings against the transparasteel viewport. Luke shudders and looks away, pulling back on the yoke to ease the craft into the air. He catches glimpses of Miré through the viewport, in the form of a desert falcon, hovering as near the skyhopper as she can as it coasts forward.

Luke increases speed gradually, feeling the stretch and tug of their bond as Miré struggles to keep up—in the form of a falcon, an urusai, a great winged lizard. She won’t be able to keep up for long, and the pain begins to swell in his chest as the distance between them increases. 

Sealed in the skyhopper he can’t hear Miré as she screams his name, but he can feel her terror. He chants her name under his breath like a prayer. His heart is thrumming like the wings of a Bestine thistle bee, hammering in his chest, like it could leap out and join the tormented dæmon struggling alongside the craft. It hurts more than he could imagine. 

There’s a strange feeling in his body, like he can sense everything around him at once, and pinpointing Miré’s exact position in space is easy as breathing. She’s so far away— _ too _ far away, and the distance  _ hurts. _ All the fears he stubbornly pushed to the back of his mind stream through his head as fast as the wind rushing by the skyhopper. What if his connection to Miré shattered and the shock killed her? 

He pulls back on the yoke and the skyhopper leaps forward toward the horizon. The pain in his chest is almost unbearable—almost. 

The horizon blurs, swims, as he pushes the skyhopper towards it. Lightheaded and dizzy, blackness begins to creep into the edges of his vision. He can still sense Miré, dwindling in the distance, the connection between them stretched out like a golden ribbon of light, pulled thin but not broken. 

He cuts the throttle and pushes the ship into a sloppy, wavering descent, sweat-slick hands sliding on the controls as the ship dips toward the desert floor. The impact tosses him forward into the yoke, the force of it punching through him—but by then unconsciousness claims him and he’s beyond caring. 

When Luke wakes, everything hurts. 

His entire chest is bruised, and his head is pounding. He turns to ask  Miré if she can see if he’s hit the back of his head and realizes that she isn’t there. Chest tight with dread, he climbs out of the skyhopper half-buried in the sand, looking wildly at the surrounding dessert, screaming his daemon’s name. 

Miré is nowhere in sight. 

He waits until the suns sink low on the horizon—more than enough time for Miré to have caught up with the downed skyhopper—but she never appears. 

The skyhopper, miraculously, is undamaged enough to fly and still has enough fuel to make it home. He’s glad that he had the foresight to remove the forward laser cannon before making the flight, since the front of the craft took the brunt of the landing. The left airfoil will probably have to be replaced, but it’s in good enough condition to limp home. Luke’s head floats in an empty fog as he flys home. The thought that Uncle Owen will be furious at the state of the skyhopper never even crosses his mind. 

He tumbles out of the skyhopper and staggers toward the door of the homestead, vaguely registering Hannili’s concerned chirping as he staggers down the steps to where Aunt Beru and her vixcha dæmon are waiting. Aunt Beru’s face is ashen and her hands are shaking as she holds them up to clasp his cheeks. His face is caked with streaks of salt and sand. “Where’s—?”

He can’t say. Sobs come juddering out of his chest, his entire body heaving with grief. He can sense her, out in the desert, and it’s strange—unnerving and unnatural—to have a part of himself hidden and distant. 

When Miré comes out of the desert again, days later, she pads across the sand on four legs, never to take flight again. When he buries his face into her fur, he knows that things will never be the same. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dæmons in this fic are a mix of animals that have appeared in various Star Wars media as well as slight variations on Earth animals that are inventions of my own (in the SW tradition of taking an Earth animal and giving it weird feet and an extra x in its name). Obi-Wan’s Basi river egret, for instance, is just an egret with fancy feathers and extra eyes.  
> 
> 
> Many of these creatures come from “The Wildlife of Star Wars,” a beautiful book of animal designs I recommend checking out. You can also check out the [Creatures of Tatooine](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Creatures_of_Tatooine) category on Wook for the various animals the children’s dæmons use for their forms.  
> 
> 
> I found all name "meanings" via quick google searches, so take all meanings with a grain of salt.  
> 
> 
> [Felinxes](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Felinx/Legends) are basically space cats. I’ve invented the particulars for night felinxes, basing them off wild cats like caracals and black servals. Asyr is a name I made up and googled after the fact. It's not common, but apparently it's an Arabic name meaning "captivating." In my head, I pronounce it uh-seer.  
> 
> 
> I like the idea of Padmé's dæmon giving Luke's dæmon a traditional Naboo name that ended in -é. I came up with Miré, a variation on Mira. "Mira" or its variants can be found in many cultures with a number of meanings, including "wonder," "goodness." Miré and Nimué are traditional feminine names from Naboo, connecting Palpatine to his home planet and Luke to his birth mother.  
> 
> 
> Breu’s dæmon is a vixcha, which I based on the South American rodent called a [viscachas.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscacha) Owen has an eopie dæmon.  
> 
> 
> In Greek myth Penelope waits for decades for her husband to return. A loose connection to Obi-Wan's wait in the desert. Make what you will of the "husband" thing.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m sorry, son,” the X-wing flight leader says as he eyes Miré skeptically. “X-wings aren’t built for large dæmons and we don’t have any left with a customized compartment big enough.” 

Miré sits patiently at Luke’s side, the picture of a docile and harmless dæmon. For an extra bit of theatrics, she wags her tail and lets her tongue lol out of her mouth, to give the flight leader the impression that she’s nothing more than an oversized desert hound. 

Miré isn’t a hound. 

“That won’t be a problem,” Luke says, and explains the ability that he and Miré share. He’s surrounded by skeptical expressions—but not on every face. 

An older Rebel commander, a shortish man with brown skin and a white beard, drifts over as he speaks. “That’s a Jedi trick,” he says. “A wolf’s a Jedi dæmon too. Don’t see many of them any more.” 

“That’s a wolf?” One of the younger techs gapes at Miré, and Luke catches another pilot in an orange flight suit—Antilles? was that his name?—rolling his eyes at the tech’s reaction. His otta dæmon sits back on her hind legs and twitches her whiskers. _She_ fits in a cockpit. Her pilot probably has a little nook or swing in the cockpit alongside him, where she can assist with the X-wing’s controls. For only a moment, Luke feels a flash of envy—not that he would ever wish a different form on Miré. She’s perfect just the way she is. 

“Princess Leia has a wolf dæmon,” Luke points out. 

“An Alderaanian night hound,” the tech corrects him. 

That might be what the Princess’s official holo-approved bio says, but Kian is a wolf—Luke should know. Kian stands as exactly as tall as Miré, his coat a midnight black to her dusty desert browns, a splash of white that starts under his muzzle and wraps up to his eyes, framing his face. 

Miré’s cocked ears say _can you believe this imbecile,_ though Luke manages to hold his tongue, for once. He doesn’t want to ruin his chances here, and there’s a fair bit of attention on them now. Miré attempts to look as harmless and unassuming as she can, knowing that humans tend to overreact in the presence of a large predator dæmon. 

The bearded commander looks at Miré and chuckles. 

“Well, if you say so,” the flight leader tells him, but he’s looking at the older officer for confirmation. 

The older man nods. “Skywalker, you said? Family name?” 

“My father’s.” 

“Huh.” Luke gets the impression that he wants to say more, but he only says, “I’ll talk to you later—after we get out of this mess.” He winks at Luke, and the lizard daemon on his shoulder turns into a twirrl and flits around his head as he strolls away. Luke blinks. He’s never met a clone before. Their dæmons never settle, no matter how long they lived. 

The flight leader has even fewer reservations after Luke proves himself in the simulators, and he’s assigned an X-wing, a call number, and a flight suit. There isn’t much time to admire himself in the changing room mirror, or to wonder at the fact that he ended up exactly where he’d always wanted to be—part of a fighter pilot unit preparing for battle—by taking the strangest, most round-about route possible. 

And it came at much too high a cost. 

When he enters the hanger, he sees Han loading up the _Falcon,_ preparing to leave and save his own skin. His dæmon paces back and forth between the _Falcon_ and the stack of crates, getting underfoot and earning what sounds like a roared curse from Chewbacca. 

Asta is significantly smaller than Miré, her fur a darker brown with flecks of black. Corellian jackals are surprisingly limber, with opposable thumbs that allow them to climb and grasp. Asta might have fit into the compartment of an X-Wing modded for a medium-sized assisting dæmon. Han had mentioned, in that off-handed manner of his, a brief stint at the Imperial Academy, which means he certainly has fighter-pilot training, and Luke had seen his skills as a pilot in action. 

And he’s throwing it all away. 

“So, you got your reward and you’re just leaving then?” Luke’s not feeling very generous, and the words come out sharp and accusatory. At least he has the small satisfaction of sensing the guilt leech out of Han, though the smuggler shrugs off Luke’s accusation. 

Asta whines quietly somewhere behind Han. 

Luke can’t quite bring himself to believe he’s going to die up there, but it’s likely that a lot of good pilots will, and everyone on the base will be targeted if they don’t manage to take the Death Star down. Their chances are not good. 

So he doesn’t have any time for Han’s excuses. Their exchange is brief, sour, and Miré bares her teeth at Asta, to show the jackal that her wagging tail isn’t going to win them any good will. 

He’s still fuming about Han when he says good-bye to Leia. She shakes her head in exasperation, and, Luke thinks, a little regret. “He’s got to follow his own path. No one can choose it for him.” 

Luke _knows_ that. He just wishes things were different. It doesn’t feel right for them to part ways, after all they’d been through together in the last few days. Luke realizes he may never see Han and Asta again—even if they don’t die today, he has no intention of following Han back into the seedy underworld from which he came—but he’s too angry to feel any regret. 

Leia kisses him on the cheek. “Be careful up there,” she whispers. When she lets go of him, Miré presses up against her other side, mirroring Kian. Leia looks a little shocked. Her arm jerks up, away from her side, so that she doesn’t make physical contact with his dæmon. 

“It’s okay,” Luke says, “Miré is going to stay with you.” He bends down to touch his forehead to his dæmon’s face, and strokes his fingers over the leathery nobs that run in a line up her nose and above her eyes. “Take care of her, okay?” 

He looks back over his shoulder as he walks away, and sees Leia standing with a wolf on either side of her, dark and light, looking like a goddess in a myth. 

* * *

Master Yoda doesn’t have a dæmon. 

Not all species do. Wookiees don’t either, and yet Chewbacca doesn’t seem concerned that he doesn’t have a physical embodiment of his soul to keep him company. He gets on perfectly well on his own. 

Luke had found it strange—and maybe, if he was being totally honest, a bit unnerving—when he’d first met the Wookiee. The empire had used the lack of a visible dæmon to claim that Wookiees were an inferior, soulless race, only suited for hard labor. If anyone has a soul, it’s Chewbacca, even if his dæmon isn’t visible to the human eye. 

There are other laws and regulations restricting species whose dæmons are different from human dæmons. Before leaving Tatooine, Luke hadn’t realized the breadth of the Empire’s cruelties against those who don’t fit in with Imperial standards. 

Back on Tatooine he’d seen a few aliens who didn’t have dæmons like humans do, but they’d kept to themselves, and he didn’t think he’d ever actually had a conversation with one. Most of his time was spent around human moisture farmers anyway, and the wide variety of cultures and races in the wider galaxy had been a bit of a culture shock. Since then he’s met Mon Calamari who carry their small aquatic dæmons in transparisteel bubbles, Rodians with amphibian dæmons that all look exactly the same except for the vibrant color of their skin, and Verpine whose dæmons manifest as a small cloud of insects. Yoda tells him that dæmons are born from the Force itself, luminous creatures made of the pure energy that binds the galaxy together. 

Even though Luke doesn’t think any less of Chewbacca and Master Yoda for not having dæmons, he can’t imagine going through life that way. It must be unbearably lonely. For decades Master Yoda has been living alone in this stinking swamp, with no one to keep him company. No wonder he seems half-crazy. 

Vader doesn’t have a dæmon either. Ben had called him “more machine than man,” but Luke didn’t miss the implication that Vader _had_ been a man once, with a dæmon. 

“What happened to Vader’s dæmon?” Luke asks one day, after a round of meditating things into the air. Miré sits at the edge of the small clearing, her head on her paws. 

“Know, I do not. Many secrets, the dark side has.” 

Luke shudders at the thought that the dark side could keep a man alive without a dæmon. The thought of living on without Miré is unimaginable. 

Miré lets out a low whine. 

“The light side can’t—”

“No,” Yoda says with finality. “But many other things, the light side can teach you. The ability to move long distances from your dæmon—”

“But we can do that already,” Luke interrupts.

“Achieved this yourself, you have?” Yoda’s eyebrows raise as does his voice, skeptical and almost mocking. 

Luke looks over at Miré, who rises to her feet and shakes her out her fur. She lopes away from the clearing where Luke and Yoda sit, and disappears off into the swamp. After a few minutes, they can hear her howl echoing through the trees from a ways off. 

Luke watches as surprise takes over Yoda’s expression. He can’t help but feel a little smug, even though he suspects it’s unbecoming for a Jedi to gloat. Instead, he tells Yoda about that day in the desert, while the Jedi Master listens, aghast. Yoda’s face darkens as he reaches the end of his story. 

"Reckless!" he hisses. "Took a terrible risk, you did." He jabs Luke with his stick. "Gently should such a thing be done! Carefully! Not until their final trials do padawans attempt it. Sacred, the ritual is. Safe to try only under the guidance of a master. Unless held in the Force by a master you are, death you risk." 

Miré trots back into the clearing, eyes bright, tail high. 

“Did I hurt her?” Luke asks, suddenly afraid. 

“No.” Yoda shakes his head, as if in resignation. “Strong, the bond between you is. Very strong.” 

“I’m sorry, Master Yoda. We didn’t know.” Sensing Luke’s distress, Miré leans her head on his shoulder. 

Yoda hunches his shoulders beneath his worn brown robe and for a moment Luke senses a deep, unfathomable sadness. The Jedi master looks old and frail, not at all like the lively, taunting being Luke had first met when he crashed on Dagobah. 

“Nothing to be done about it now,” Yoda sighs. “Headstrong, you both are. What kind of Jedi will you make, hm?” 

* * *

The Death Star’s alarm siren booms out a death knell as troopers rush through the halls, scrambling to battle stations in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the base or fleeing the station in the remaining transports. Luke drags his father through the seething chaos, Miré leading the way, snarling down any Imperial officers or stormtroopers who attempt to detain them. Few do. 

They head for Vader’s personal shuttle, which no one has dared to commandeer, in spite of the increasing pandemonium in the hangar. Luke nearly makes it to the shuttle before his knees buckle in exhaustion. He manages to haul his precious burden to the edge of the ramp before his father tells him to stop. 

“Luke. Help me take this mask off.” 

“But you’ll die.” 

“Nothing can stop that now. Just for once, let me look at you with my own eyes.” 

Luke can’t deny his father his request—it could be his last, a small thought that Luke doesn’t want to entertain whispers in his head. He carefully eases off the helmet and sees his father’s face, grey and scarred, for the first time. 

His father’s gaze rests on his face for a long moment, pride shining from his eyes, before his hand lifts to scrabble weakly with the edge of his life-support module. “Help her,” he gasps. 

Not entirely sure why his father wants to open his life support module, Luke runs his hand along the edge of the box until he finds the locking mechanism that seals it shut. With the Force and a pocket knife, he breaks the lock. The failing electronics give one last sputter as he pulls the chest plate controls away and tosses it aside. Beneath the control panel is a narrow stasis chamber, so small the Luke could barely believe it holds a living creature. 

A golden eye, dim with pain, blinks up at him. His father’s dæmon once took flight on swift wings, wings that are now twisted and pinned close to her body, stripped of all but a few ragged feathers. Luke thinks she might have been a bird of prey before her condition rendered her flightless. Her bare, burn-scarred skin is pink as a hatchling’s, and her body bulges with tumors, lumpy masses under raw skin. 

Horror prickles in cold needles all over Luke’s body. 

His father speaks her name. “Aephelia.” 

“Padmé. Nemésion,” Aephelia calls, her voice a reedy whisper, so soft he can barely make out the names. His Mother and her dæmon. 

His father’s dæmon calling out for his mother with her dying breath. It’s the first time Luke has ever heard their names. 

“Now. Go, my son. Leave me.” 

“No, you’re coming with me.” Maybe if he says the words out loud, he can _make_ them true. That’s what he came here to do, and he can’t fail his father now. “I’ve got to save you.” 

“You already have,” Aephelia breathes. 

“You were right,” his father says. “You were right about me. Tell her she was right.” For a moment, Luke wonders if his father is so far gone that he thinks Padmé is still alive. “Your sister. You were right.” 

“Father. Aephelia. I won’t leave you.” 

“Aephelia,” Miré croons, gently nuzzling the poor dæmon’s broken body with her nose. “Don’t leave us.” 

“We must,” Aephelia breathes. She fades like a wisp of smoke and the last light goes out of his father’s eyes. 

* * *

Debris from the Death Star streaks across the darkening Endor sky, brightening the evening with irregular flashes of light. In the Ewok village below, the celebration, which will last all night and into the next day, is only getting started. Luke knows he’s expected, but he has a few things he needs to do first. 

On the _Falcon_ he opens a small locker that sits in the corner of the crew quarters where he sleeps whenever he travels with Han and Chewie. For the last four years, it’s been _his_ locker, filled with the few personal effects he owns. He digs below the folded clothes until he reaches the things he’s hidden at the bottom of the locker. His hand brushes against a worn tunic, carefully folded around the golden metal that Leia had placed around his neck on Yavin. He wishes it still smelled of the homestead but the scent has faded over the years, though Miré claims she can still smell the desert in the faded fibers. 

He pushes aside the few other odds and ends that he’d stashed away until he finds three slivers of jappor ivory underneath an old datacard. He’d bought the jappor wood at a market on Sullust, intending to make something for Leia like the necklace his Aunt Beru had once worn on festival days. He’d never found the time and the ivory sat at the bottom of his locker for two years. 

He uses a small soldering tool to inscribe Aephelia’s name onto the surface of the ivory. His hands are shaky, his prosthetic clenching too tight and falling loose at the worst possible moments. Miré presses her head against his arm to steady him. The clumsy scrawl isn’t what he hoped for, but it’s the best he can do to honor his father’s dæmon. He rubs his thumb across the crude indentations on the ivory as he thinks of her golden eyes. 

There’s something missing, an empty space he can’t fill. _Padmé and Nemésion._ His mother and her dæmon. After the war—a phrase that feels delicate and full of painful hope, and yet closer than ever before—he’ll search for them. If no memorial stands to mark their names, he’ll perform the funerary rituals himself. He knows nothing about his mother except for her name, but Leia senses that she loved them, and at the very least they owe her a ceremony of some kind. 

Later. After the war. 

Vader’s shuttle rests in a clearing a mile or so from the Ewok village. Miré helps him drag enough fallen wood to build a funeral pyre in the center of the clearing and Luke uses the Force to raise the beams up until the structure stands above his head. After placing his father’s body on the pyre he sets the ivory marker on his father’s chest in the empty, open space where Aephelia had been imprisoned for decades. 

He grieved for months after Bespin, fits of rage and tears taking over his body until his head ached and his muscles were knotted like a fist. As he watches the flames rise, he realizes that he doesn't feel that same grief now. A soft sorrow suffuses him, regret for all the moments he might have shared with his father drifting by like smoke. He releases them into the Force. Miré tips back her head and howls, an elegiac song that resonates through the clearing. 

His father is at peace. 

The Force feels buoyant, brighter than it ever has before, and he can still feel the rush of frantic jubilation surging from the celebration in the village behind them. He wishes them joy. Tonight the galaxy rejoices, and half of Luke’s heart is with them. The other half is in the ashes that rise into the air above his father’s pyre, sparking and vanishing into the black. 

  
  


* * *

The entire galaxy falls apart when Mara is twenty-one. 

She’s in her apartment on Coruscant, trying to wash the stink of Jabba's court out of her clothes and going over her failed mission to assassinate Skywalker in her head, analyzing her missteps—when an explosion goes off in her head. Blurred images flash before her eyes, streaks of red and blue light. The acrid smell of lightning fills her nose. She can hear screaming, a man’s voice in pain, pleading. Then a single death howl fading into the sound of her own voice, keening like an animal in pain. Asyr is screaming. 

Everything goes dark and quiet for a while. 

When she comes to, the floor is cold under her cheek. She can feel Asyr lying along her side, his body trembling. Her throat feels scraped raw. When she opens her eyes, everything remains dark. She can’t see. _She can’t see._

Panic bubbles up. Asyr twists around and laves his rough tongue over her exposed cheek. Mara wraps herself around him, digging her fingers into his fur. “What happened?” 

“The Emperor is dead,” Asyr tells her. His voice is small and frightened. “I think you had a seizure. You collapsed and didn’t wake up.” Her fingers tighten in his fur. “One of the servant droids called for help. Isard’s goons showed up instead. We’ve been in one of her cells since then.” 

The cell is only a few paces wide, and only long enough for a cot and a small fresher. A prison droid brings her food and water. Long, black days pass. 

Her vision slowly returns. At first, all she sees are dull patches of lights but gradually, after a few more days, the world around her emerges, blurry and dim. She’s lost weight and muscle mass, and the grey prison jumpsuit bags around her hips. 

She discovers that the trauma that hit her when the Emperor died did not leave Asyr unmarked. A pure white streak runs down his spine, from his forehead to the base of his tail, like a streak of lightning cleaving him in two. The new fur is stiff and puffs up when Asyr is agitated, standing up in a spiky spine along his back. It remains erect for their entire stay in Isard’s cells. 

The interrogation starts out soft. Interrogator Ivak plays a sympathetic friend who just wants to improve her situation in exchange for whatever scraps of information she can give him. Mara insists that as a lowly dancer in the Emperor’s court, she has nothing to tell him, that all she ever saw of the Court were ballroom and bedrooms. She pretends that her vision still hasn’t returned, and Ivak pretends he feels compassion for her. 

His dæmon is a long, black, stick-thin insect, with faceted eyes and multiple wing cases that she rattles loudly—a dry, impatient sound—at irregular moments during Mara’s confessions. It’s a tactic to distract their prisoner, and Mara always lets her voice stumble to a halt, blinking uncertainly at her interrogator. She has her own tactics. 

Besides these minor, planned interruptions, he lets her talk, lets her spin out stories that are obviously lies. She’s stalling for time and he knows it. He seems content to let her play this game until Isard’s patience wears out and he receives new orders on how to handle this particular prisoner. 

They both know that without the Emperor she’s only a ghost. 

“He feels sorry for you,” Asyr says after Ivak and his dæmon leave. “He’s going easy on you because he still thinks you can’t see.” 

“Or because he wants to kriff me,” Mara says. 

Asyr butts her chin with his head and she strokes the stiff fur along his spine. “We can use it.” 

It’s simple. 

The next time he comes to her cell, she has her jumpsuit down around her waist as though he’d caught her in the act of dressing. A gasp, a flash of white skin as she yanks up the garment is enough to distract him. He hesitates a few steps into the room, the door sliding shut behind him. Asyr leaps from the shadows, tearing Ivak’s dæmon from his shoulder and dropping to the ground, crushing her between his teeth. She vanishes like a puff of smoke and Ivak falls dead at Mara’s feet. 

Mara braces for the sickening twist in her stomach that always happens when they kill a dæmon. It hits harder than usual, but only lasts seconds. She rolls the body over, retrieving his code cylinders and unlocking the door. As soon as it slides open, Mara flings herself through the entrance, using her momentum to ricochet off the far wall and launch herself at the trooper stationed by the door. He drops his blaster, scrabbling at her as she leaps onto his shoulders and snaps his neck with a vicious twist. His dæmon disappears, and he topples with Mara’s body still wrapped around him, dragging her down with him. She lands hard on her side, and lays there gasping for a moment before Asyr’s urgent voice pulls her to her feet again. 

Mara knows the location of a hidden wall panel, on the level above her cell, that leads to the network of secret passages that riddle the Palace like a termite nest. The panel is invisible unless you know exactly where to look, impenetrable unless you tap in exactly the right spot. She uses Ivak’s cylinder code to take the turbolift up a level, and the hidden panel is exactly where she remembers it would be. 

The passageways on the prison level are narrow and grimy. Asyr, with his night felinx eyes, capable of seeing in pitch black, leads the way, Mara shuffling after him. In places the passageway is more of a tunnel, forcing Mara onto her hands and knees, ducking and bumping her head in the dark. 

Finally, they reach a ladder that rises up a shaft that bores through the spine of the Palace, from the lower levels to the great spires. Asyr leaps up and begins to climb, Mara following clumsily behind him. 

“This is the floor,” Asyr says, nose in the air, whiskers alert. 

When Mara crawls into the passageway, dim motion-sensor lights set into the walls flicker on. There’s room for her to stretch out her legs as she leans back against the wall. Her hands are black with grime and rubbed raw in places, and shake as she holds them out in front of her. The grey fabric of her prison jumpsuit is frayed at the knees and her thin prison slippers are nearly worn through.

Asyr butts her chin, lapping at her face with his rough tongue. “We have to keep going,” he says. “Isard must have figured out how we escaped. She filled the lower passageways with gas. I could smell it wafting up.” 

Standing feels like a task beyond her capabilities. She takes a few shuddering breaths first, clinging to the last slivers of her strength as Asyr cajoles her to her feet. There isn’t time to cross the Palace and reach her quarters, and Isard is sure to have bugged them anyway. They need to get out. Fast. 

The passageways on this level are familiar, and from here she knows the route to the outer walls of the Palace. She knows that there’s a hatch near a droid-manned cargo chute on the Eastern wall of the Palace. The hatch is several floors above ground level, and Isard may have dismissed it as a viable exit if she had already sealed all ground-level exits. 

She huddles in the crawl space for an hour, watching the movement of the cargo barges below, lining up, loading and unloading, supervised by spidery droids. Wind whips through the open hatch, chilling her to the bone. Her vision is still murky and her eyes water constantly in the cold. Asyr presses into her side, his fur providing scant warmth. 

She waits until the right barge comes along, tall enough that she won’t kill herself leaping from the hatch. “That one,” Asyr says, as the big black shape drifts up to the side of the Palace. She unfolds stiff limbs and leans out of the hatch. It’s still a long way down. 

The abilities her master had gifted her seem to slip out of her hands like vapor, no matter how hard she clings. She desperately grasps at whatever meager power she can still draw into her body as she throws herself forward, praying that it will be enough to guide her fall and cushion her landing. 

It’s enough. 

The impact knocks the wind out of her, but after a few long, sickening moments, she knows that nothing’s broken. She plasters herself to the top of the vehicle, Asyr crouched beside her, as the barge trundles off into Coruscant, crawling along the surface of the city. 

Coruscant is in chaos. Mara can feel a whirlwind of anger, fear, and frantic, traitorous jubilation. They have to get off-planet. Her vision is poor, so Asyr takes the lead, her hand gripping the fur of his shoulder. Asyr leads her to a spaceport, a busy anonymous hub packed with people fleeing the planet. They blend in with hundreds of beings swarming away from a planet on the brink of violence, jockeying for a spot on the floor of a big cargo ship that ferries refugees to the far reaches of the Rim. No one knows who’s in charge anymore, and no one really cares if the refugees have valid government identification—who knows what the legitimate government is anymore, anyway? 

It’s a wretched journey. She gets spacesick for the first time in her life, and spends a day vomiting into a bucket in a corner of the hold while the world spins around her, Asyr huddled up against her side, hissing at anyone who comes close. She runs out of ration bars and money for food before the week-long trip is over, and resorts to stealing food from other passengers. The hold is packed with beings of all species, and the smell is indescribable. She hates how low she’s sunk. 

When she finally lands on Commenor she cuts her hair short and dyes it black. A specialized dye is needed for daemon fur. Those dyes were highly illegal under imperial law, in order to prevent people from doing exactly what she intends to do. In her previous life, the life that is dead to her now, she’d attended parties in which the upper elite of Imperial Center dyed their dæmons in bright fluorescent colors, flaunting their ability to use black market dæmon dyes in the most flamboyant and frivolous manner. 

“But who really knows what’s illegal these days?” the black market dealer says almost mournfully as he sells her a small bottle of dye for an exorbitant price. It turns Asyr’s fur grey for months. By then they’d slipped off of Commenor to the next dingy planet they can buy passage to, and then to the next. 

On Phorliss they walk into a cantina and Mara gets a job as a waitress. She lies about her name and experience, but she doesn’t think the barkeep cares about either. The pay is barely enough to get by, but he gives her a place to stay and offers a few small kindnesses. It doesn’t last long. 

The Empire she knew is gone, the rise and fall of Isard and the petty Imperial warlords that follow only its final death throes. But Mara survives. She was once the Emperor’s Hand, who heard his voice and embodied his will throughout the galaxy. She isn’t sure what she is now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Rebels, space wolves are now canon! Luke obviously has a more Earth-sized version. This fic assumes that different planets/ecosystems have different types of a particular animal species, thus Luke has a desert wolf. Leia has an Alderaanian or Naboo mountain wolf, probably.
> 
> Padmé is a Persian name, and to connect Leia to Padmé I looked for Persian names for Leia's dæmon. Kian is a Persian name meaning "king" or "royal." It also appears in Ireland, meaning "wise."
> 
> Wedge’s dæmon Beatrix is a space otter—er, [otta.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Otta) Specifically, a Corellian river otta. 
> 
> Giving Han a coyote/jackal is probably too on-the-nose, but I couldn’t resist. Asta means star, a good name for the dæmon of a space pilot.
> 
> Padmé’s dæmon Nemésion is a [Naboo guarlara.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gualama/Legends)
> 
> Aephelia is another invented bird; a species of space falcon. Jedi dæmons tend to gravitate toward bird or wolf forms, though it isn’t a hard and fast rule. Obi-Wan and Anakin have bird dæmons, Luke and Leia have wolf dæmons.


	3. Chapter 3

The first reoccurrence happens on Sif-Uawana. 

All morning Mara feels as if she’s jumping at shadows and things sliding around at the edge of her vision. Asyr paces the length of the tiny apartment, the white line of stiff fur along his spine raised. Half-forgotten nightmares cling to her long after she’s had her first caf, brief glimpses echoing through her head. A dark, cavernous room lit by starlight, echoing with the sucking sound of Vader’s breath...

She makes herself another cup of caf; tries to ignore the way her fingers tremor as they wrap around the warm cup. 

It’s been three months since she started working at the Kasaii Casino. Sif-Uwana is an insignificant speck of a planet clinging to the edges of the Colonies sector; practically on the Rim, practically uncivilized. An easy place to slip in with a forged ID and find work as a server in one of the tackier casinos that dot the capital city. 

She’s in the middle of a shift when it happens. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. The words sear through her head, followed by images that flash before her—the dark hall from her dreams, her master’s face creased in an ecstatic smile, the flash of two lightsabers, blue and red, the smell of lightning burning in her nose. 

She wakes up on the floor of the casino, Asyr standing over her, teeth bared, daring the burly Trandoshan security guard to come any closer. Gleaming shards of shattered glass surround her; the golden circle of the drink tray she had been carrying overturned on the carpet by her head. The shocked murmurs of nearby patrons, disturbed from their nightly entertainments, sound muted and far away. 

_ “Tchka, _ you’re awake now?” the Trandoshan says. “Get up. Boss wants to see you.” 

In the manager’s office, she doesn’t fight back when the guard pins her against the wall and holds a scanner to her neck, though Asyr hisses and bares his teeth. 

“You screamed for ‘your master’ when you fell,” Vassily says, tapping one of her glossy manicured nails on the edge of the desk. “Can’t have any slave girls on my staff. Especially not if they have one of those—what’s it called? One of those  _ conditions _ that cause seizures.” 

“You won’t find a slave chip,” Mara snarls. The Trandoshan guard only releases her once the scanner has confirmed her claim. Asyr is growling, a low, continuous rumble, the white hair along his spine standing straight up. “I don’t  _ have _ a condition.” 

“Hmm,” Vassily muses. 

_ Tap tap tap _ goes her fingernail on the desk. Mara wants to break her neck. 

“Can’t risk it.” She tosses Mara a credit chip. “Collect your things and don’t come back.” 

Mara barely reaches her apartment before the visions return, swamping out the dull reality of her empty, dingy room. She reaches out, blindly, and a glass flies off the counter and shatters against the far wall without her even touching it. The visions come swimming up as she collapses to the floor. 

The dark expanse of a throne room, crisscrossed with catwalks, surrounds her, her master standing silhouetted against the starry waste. She basks in his presence again, as if all was right with the galaxy. 

It takes her a moment to recognize the battle framed by the viewport behind him, explosion blooming crimson and orange in the void. Another moment to register the sounds of combat echoing through the great throne room. A sickening feeling creeps in, her body going leaden with dread. 

Below on the lower dais, Vader presses back the young Jedi, their sabers crackling and groaning as they crash together. Skywalker staggers back under a blow and lowers his blade, leaving himself wide open. It almost looks like a surrender and Mara feels her contempt for the Jedi surge. Vader could finish him off, and for a moment, Mara prays for the killing blow—but he doesn’t strike down the Jedi. 

Instead, an understanding seems to flow between them and together they turn and charge up the stairs toward her master. He throws up his arms, his face a mask of fear and shock as the blue and red blades slice through him. The defensive lightning that crackles at his fingers evaporates and his cry cleaves the air as his body crumples to the floor. 

Mara screams and screams and no one hears her. 

When she comes out of it again, Asyr is hunched over her, his nose inches from her face. Mara reaches up and pulls him close, digging her fingers into his fur as she sucks in sobbing breaths. 

Her master’s command—the last order he ever gave her—echoes through her head. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. 

“He knew,” Mara whispers. “He  _ knew _ and I failed him.” 

Her master’s fate was sealed when she let Skywalker slip out of her hands. She should have fought harder to earn a place in Jabba’s inner circle, she should have shot Skywalker dead before he fell into the rancor’s den, she should have killed the security guard who had thrown her in the dungeons below the palace until it was too late. 

Failing in her mission, it should have been her duty to throw her body between her master and the traitorous Sith and upstart Jedi. It’s too late now. Her master is gone and she is nothing. 

“You kept repeating Skywalker’s name,” Asyr says, his voice a soft growl in her ear. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. 

“He killed our master.” The words grind out of her throat. “Him and Vader.” 

Although the Rebellion’s official reports of the Battle of Endor claim otherwise, the galaxy churns with rumors that the last Jedi killed her master with the aid of his mysterious powers, powers like the Jedi of old. Mara hadn’t believed them—couldn’t believe that the slight young man she’d glimpsed at Jabba’s and had fallen for the crime lord’s simplest tricks, could have possibly killed the most powerful Sith lord in a thousand years. 

Now she knows he had help. That  _ traitor. _

Aysr is shaking with rage in her arms. Mara wishes Vader were still alive so that she could kill him again—make him suffer like she has. 

Any adrenaline in her system fades quickly and exhaustion overtakes her. She wakes several hours later. While she slept, Asyr dragged a water bottle and a few rations bars within reach and Mara consumes them in a matter of minutes. Her hands begin to shake as she wipes at her mouth. She can hear the sound of lightsaber against lightsaber before her vision fades and the scene in the throne room comes over her again like a storm. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. 

After the first day, the visions come at irregular intervals. Twelve hours after the last recurrence, then twenty-three, then seven, and then several days pass until they strike again. The stash of ration bars and the few packaged meals in the tiny conservator dwindle to nothing in a matter of days, forcing Mara to make nerve-wracking trips to the corner store a few blocks away. 

After two weeks the visions fade enough for her to hunt desperately for any sort of employment to keep her off the streets. She gets a job at an illegal racetrack drumming up audiences, targeting marks and finding jobs for a swoop gang. After eight months she barely makes enough money to move on to the next planet when the visions hit again, the command pounding through her head like a migraine, until she’s unable to think, let alone work. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. 

Skywalker. The man who killed her master and stole everything from her, his actions on the Death Star shaping every moment of her life since. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. 

Her master’s last command is a gift, she realizes, granting her a purpose. This is why she survived the psychic trauma that nearly killed her when the bond to her master was severed by his death, and she clings to the dream of avenging him like a lifeline spiraling from a ship. 

But—she can never seem to scrape together enough credits to make it off the Rim. The New Republic continues to rise, streaking across the galaxy like a comet, burning away the remains of the Empire. Skywalker is at its blazing center, glorious hero of the new order. Getting close enough to him in order to fulfill the last command her master gave her is almost impossible. 

Despite being a public figure, he keeps a maddeningly low profile. He flits from planet to planet, on missions that only become public after their success. It feels like she’s hunting a faulty transmission signal, one that shorts out and goes silent and seems to move further away whenever she gets close to locking on. 

The command is her head is a little like a bad signal as well; surging in intensity and then fading away with no discernible pattern she can make out. She’s never had an episode as severe as the first occurrence, but now and then they disrupt her life, just often enough that she can never get comfortable on a planet or hold on to any of the dead-end jobs she works. Never long enough to build the sort of resources she needs to hunt Skywalker in the Core. 

Even when the visions are at a low ebb and the command in her head has faded, he haunts her dreams. In her sleeping mind, the visions shift and warp, distorting the scene that her master had gifted her. She watches Vader stand aside as her master pins Skywalker to the floor, bolts of lightning erupting from his fingertips. Skywalker and his dæmon writhe at his feet, screaming in ceaseless agony. Triumph, sweet and heady, sweeps through her as Skywalker gasps his last breath, his icy blue eyes clouding over, his dæmon vanishing like smoke in a gust of wind. 

Other dreams are not as comforting. Once, she never even makes it to the throne room. She beats her hand bloody against the sealed door, Asyr scratching frantically at the metal frame alongside her, her master’s screams bleeding through the durasteel. 

Another night, and Vader’s treachery twists into a final act of betrayal. He seizes her master and lifts him above his head, lightning cascading over them both before Vader throws him to his death down a shaft. Mara is frozen in horror as he falls, falls, falls...

And over and over, endless, senseless variations. 

* * *

Darkness surrounds him. 

It presses down like physical weight, oozing into his ears and mouth. He can’t see, can’t move, can’t catch his breath. Meltmassif.  _ Mindor.  _ He’s entombed under the black stone, in darkness that stretches forever. 

_ Miré? _ Miré was encased into the meltmassif beside him, he knows this, but he can’t feel her. Paralysed in the dark, he can’t reach out and touch her, and he can’t feel her through the Force either. He’s alone. Alone in the dark. 

_ Miré? Miré!  _

Nothing echoes back. He’s lost in the dark and the silence. 

_ Miré!  _

Something cold touches the side of his neck and Luke jerks awake, his heart pounding in his chest like a sonic drill. Miré has her front legs propped up on the bed, her face pressed into his neck. 

“We’re in a diplomatic residence in the capital city on Uquine,” she says softly, grounding him in the strange room as he comes back to himself. 

_ Kriff. _ “Was I shouting in my sleep again?” His voice comes out ragged and rough with sleep. 

“Luke?” A voice calls from the other side of the door to his room. 

That answers that question. 

“Wedge?” Luke calls back, wincing at the way the words scratch in his throat. He pushes himself up on one elbow, dislodging Miré, and then freezes. 

A black void gapes through the large viewport across from his bed, darkness pushing into the room with him. Luke gasps, fear locking him into place. Miré whines and presses her head into his chest. 

Light from the hallway spills in as Wedge slides back the door. “Are you okay, boss?” His forehead creases in concern as he steps into the room, Beatrix padding at his feet. 

“Cover—cover the viewport.” 

Without questioning his request or correcting him, Wedge pulls the screen over the window, shutting out the darkness. 

_ Window _ —it’s a window, not a viewport. The darkness is just nighttime on the moonless planet of Uquine, nothing more. Luke drops his head as shame prickles over his body. “Sorry I woke you up,” he says. 

“It’s alright,” Wedge says. 

“Just—bad dreams.”

“Yeah.” Wedge comes over and sits on the edge of the bed. Beatrix climbs up onto his lap, her webbed feet splaying over his knees. He flashes Luke a lopsided, self-deprecating smile. “Always takes a moment for me to shake them off.” 

“Yeah.” Luke buries his face into Miré’s fur and breathes for a few long minutes. 

Wedge doesn’t speak, doesn’t stare, just sits beside them quietly. His presence is a balm, soothing away the panic that threatens to strangle Luke. 

When Luke lifts his head again, Wedge starts to speak, going over inane details from the day before. The breakfast they had, and did he see the countess’s hat? Indescribable! He makes Luke chuckle, even if it is a shaky, half-hysterical sound. 

“You okay, now, Luke?” 

“Yeah, I’m—I’m fine.”

Beatrix glides down off of his lap and Wedge stands beside the bed. “Can I get anything for you?” 

_ Come to bed with me, _ he doesn’t say. The terror that had gripped him is replaced by a familiar ache beneath his breastbone. He misses the comfort they found in each other during the war. It doesn’t escape his attention that Beatrix is keeping a polite distance from Miré. Wedge has moved on. Luke wasn’t there for him, and he regrets that he couldn’t be what Wedge wanted—what he needed. They’re still friends—good friends—but it just isn’t the same. 

“Thanks, Wedge, I’ll be okay now.” 

Beatrix raises up on her hind legs to touch noses with Miré before she scoots over to the door on all fours. Wedge lingers by the doorframe.

“Gimme a call if you need anything, okay?” 

Luke laughs, though it rings false and hollow. “I’ll be fine, Wedge. Get back to sleep.” 

It’s quiet, after Wedge leaves. Lonely. 

Miré heaves herself up onto the narrow edge of the bed, and Luke rolls onto his side to give her more room. There isn’t really enough space, but neither of them can bear to be apart. Luke falls asleep with his face in Miré’s warm fur. 

* * *

  
  


From a small booth tucked into an inconspicuous corner of the  _ Blue Moth _ cantina, Mara watches as a small group of smugglers makes themselves comfortable at a table on the other side of the bar. Three men, human—or mostly, as far as Mara can tell. 

She isn’t the only one watching them. The bar’s owner glances over from time to time, the large blue moth on her shoulder fluttering its wings in agitation, and other patrons take notice and then quickly glance away. It confirms Mara’s suspicion about the man who takes a seat against the wall, his bird dæmon perched on his shoulder. She’s been tracking Talon Karrde since she heard that he’d landed on Sibisime, but this is the first time she’s actually set eyes on him. 

The nondescript spacer’s jacket and well-tailored but plain blue shirt and dark pants belie the fact that this is the man who took over most of Jabba’s territory quietly and efficiently after the Hutt died, absorbing all smaller smuggling operations into his cartel. He’s tall, his short hair dark and going silver at his temples, his skin a coppery brown and eyes a pale, cold grey-blue. 

His dæmon is a tetraoculus avian, though she’s missing one of her four eyes, the thin white line of a scar sealing the eyelid shut. A scavenger, not a bird of prey. Her feathers look black until they catch the light and gleam a deep, metallic blue. She sits on folded legs, claws dug into her human’s shoulder, clawed forearms tucked against her breastfeathers. 

Most pirate crews wear some sort of insignia marking their loyalty—jewelry, tattoos, brands, or colors. These men all dress as inconspicuously as their leader, sending a very different message about the profile of Karrde’s organization than the flamboyance of a Hutt Kajidic. His two lieutenants have light skin, the younger one with shaggy blond hair, the older man dark-haired and wearing a dour expression. They nod politely at the waitress who glides over to their table and deposits a tray of drinks and food. Good liqueur, and more notably, clean glasses. 

Mara’s attention slides away from the table toward a figure at the bar doing the same thing she is—watching Karrde and his people while trying not to draw attention to the fact. It’s impossible to know the species of the person at the bar under the robes and mask of an Autast pilgrim—or someone appearing to be a pilgrim. The grey and orange striped mask that completely covers their head is a pilgrim’s traditional mask, but the bracelets covering their wrists are all wrong. A monk’s bracelets, not a pilgrim’s. 

_ Amateur.  _

Are they an assassin or a bounty hunter? She can’t be certain. The assassin’s weapon—a heavy blaster, she guesses—is strapped to his left side under the thick robes. The way the fabric hangs off the shoulder is a tell. 

“Could be a dæmon,” she mutters. 

“No,” Asyr says. “It’s a blaster.” 

When the figure reaches into their robes it could be merely to reach for a prayer token, but Mara  _ knows _ they’re about to strike, as sure as she knows their intended target. Even before they stand from the bar, she’s on her feet, moving to intersect before she has a chance to consider her line of attack. 

Asyr darts toward the counterfeit pilgrim so quickly he’s nothing more than a black blur low to the ground. He leaps up from the floor and sinks his teeth into the assassin’s shoulder. It fouls their aim, the shot going wide and biting into the side of the bar. Shouts and screams echo through the bar. 

The assassin cries out and curses as Asyr drags them down, but manages to catch themselves on their hands and knees. The blaster hits the floor and skids under a table. Instead of chasing it, the assassin leaps to their feet, a vibroblade in their left hand. The robes must conceal armorweave, or else they wouldn’t have shaken off Asyr’s attack so quickly. 

Mara doesn’t have time to chase down the blaster, as useful as it might be. She ducks under the hunter’s arm as it sweeps out, their blade cutting through the air inches from her head. She lunges for the mask, trying to dislodge it and blind them. A hawk-bat dæmon swarms out of the assassin’s heavy robes, snapping and slashing with its clawed wings. Mara curses as it rakes a shallow cut across her cheek. She staggers back a step, ducking another swing of the virbroblade.  _ Sloppy.  _ She needs to be better. 

The hawk-bat shrieks and propels itself from the assassin’s shoulder, swooping at her head. A mistake. Asyr surges up and snatches it out of the air, jaws clamping down on the wiry gray body. 

The hunter shouts again, staggering as they feel Asyr’s teeth sink into their dæmon. Mara takes the opening to lunge for their wrist and twist the vibroblade out of their hand. Grabbing the assassin’s shoulder, she sinks the blade into the gap between the mask and the collar of the armorweave robe. The assassin and their dæmon scream simultaneously. Mara topples with the body, hand still clenched around the knife as the assassin spasms, his last breath gurgling out from behind the mask. 

Mara wipes a hand across her cheek and feels blood smear on her face. At least it was fast. Sitting up on her knees, she looks up into the barrel of a blaster. 

“Easy,” the younger lieutenant says, blond hair falling into his face. “No fast movements. Got her, Tapper?” 

She raises her hands and stands, Asyr slinking to her side. The older lieutenant has his blaster trained on her as well, and as soon as he has her dead in his sights, the blond lieutenant leans over the body. He digs through the assassin’s robes until he comes up with a bounty hunter’s tracking fob and slides it across the table. 

Karrde picks up the tracking fob in his long fingers and examines it. “Crimson Dawn, do you think?” 

“Too sloppy for her,” the older man—Tapper—says, and then reconsiders. “Though she does like to throw her weight around.”

“Perhaps a warning?” 

“My money’s on whatever’s left of Black Sun.”

Karrde looks up at Mara, and his pale blue eyes glint with curiosity. “But you’re not either, are you?” 

“I’m not guild,” she says, as Karrde’s lieutenant pats her down. He finds her knife and lets her keep it. “I’m not with anyone.” 

Karrde’s dæmon leaps from his shoulder and glides over the table to land on the back of a chair near Asyr. She tilts her head this way and that, watching Asyr out of her three remaining eyes, before bending her head and speaking to him. The humans ignore their quiet conversation, as is customary. 

Placing the tracking fob on the table, Karrde nods to an empty chair. As soon as Mara sits, he gestures to the spread on the table in front of him. “Please, help yourself.” 

Compared to the decadent feasts she once knew in the Imperial Palace, it’s only a simple plate of fruit and cheese, but it’s finer food than she’s had since the casino. Mara’s mouth waters. There are  _ candied sour figs _ .  She shakes her head and curls her hands into fists, tucking them into her lap.

“What do I owe for your swift intervention?” Karrde’s dæmon alights on his shoulder again, her head tilting as she examines Mara, her three remaining eyes bright. 

“I want on your crew,” Mara says. 

“In security?” he returns, his voice dry. 

She shakes her head. “I  _ can _ fight—” She shrugs a shoulder toward the body of the bounty hunter behind her. “But you don’t want to put an unknown recruit on your security crew. That’s careless.” 

He raises his eyebrows and rubs a finger over his bottom lip, elbow popped up on the back of his chair. 

“I can be of more use to you elsewhere,” she continues. “I can pilot, fix hyperdrives, run a crew—anything you’ve got, I can learn it.” 

“Ships?” 

“I can fly anything.” 

His dæmon ducks her head and whispers in his ear, and Karrde’s eyes flick to Asyr, who sits by Mara’s side, and stares back, unblinking. She can sense him coming to some conclusion, and her heart leaps into her throat. Karrde raises an eyebrow at Tapper, who says reluctantly, “we’ve got an opening.” 

“Aves?” Karrde asks, though asking his lieutenant’s permission is clearly a formality. 

Standing guard behind her, the blond man says, “whatever you say, boss.” 

“Your name?” Karrde asks her. 

Mara hesitates. A man carrying the obvious alias  _ Talon Karrde _ would likely accept any pseudonym she offers—but she’s tired of being Arica, Karinna, Chiara, Merellis. 

She reaches across the table and takes the hand he extends. 

“Mara Jade.” 

* * *

“Unidentified starfighter, this is the freighter  _ Wild Karrde. _ Do you need assistance?” Mara says into the open com line. “Repeating: unidentified starfighter, this is the freighter  _ Wild Karrde. _ Do you need assistance?”

The X-wing, hanging dead in the void of space, has just enough power to rotate toward the nose of the  _ Wild Karrde. _ In the pilot’s chair on the other end of the bridge, Dankin snorts and tilts the  _ Karrde _ out of the X-wing’s sights again. 

_ “Wild Karrde, _ this is New Republic X-wing AA-589.” Skywalker’s voice crackles through the comm. “As a matter of fact, yes, I could use some help.” 

She manages to keep any expression off of her face and out of her voice as she negotiates with Skywalker and arranges for his transfer to the  _ Karrde, _ but Asyr arches his back, the white streak along his spine standing straight up. When she cuts the line, she lets out a breath, gazing straight ahead through the viewport. Her breathing is even, her hands steady on the comm controls. 

“Mara?” Karrde asks behind her. There’s curiosity sparking behind his eyes when she looks back over her shoulder. Bellaris tilts her head and blinks in triplicate. 

Mara keeps her face blank and her voice even. “Should I collect Skywalker?” 

“I’ll greet him.” Karrde rises decisively to his feet. “I want to see his reaction to his rescuers. Chin, shadow us in case of surprises. Wear a ysalamiri frame and don’t shoot unless you get my signal.” He raises an eyebrow in her direction. “Settings to stun, please.” 

Mara bites her tongue and shoots him a glare. Docking the X-wing and securing the tether keeps her busy until she hears the door to the ship's bridge slide open again. When she looks up she can’t quite keep the venom out of her face and she watches as Skywalker blinks in surprise. 

Skywalker is taller than her, but not by much. She’d memorized the Imperial files on him and objectively she knows that fact, but it still takes her by surprise up close. Even with the bulk of his flight suit, he’s lean and light on his feet. He certainly doesn’t  _ look _ like the sort of man who could murder her master, but then again, he had Vader’s help. 

The wolf—the wolf is big. Larger than most space-faring dæmons; much heavier than Asyr. His X-wing must be modified for her size. She stands placidly by his side, as if she wasn’t a powerful force of muscle and teeth, who could tear out Mara’s throat in a single leap. 

Karrde murmurs something to Skywalker, his eyes on the other man’s face. Bellaris, perched on Karrde’s shoulder, is watching Mara and Asyr. _ Kriff him _ —this is one of his karking tests. He worked out for himself that she loathes Skywalker, and she wonders what he would pay to pry the reason out of her. 

Skywalker turns toward him, and his dæmon lifts her head as Bellaris flaps her wings, blue-black feathers catching the light. Neither of them notice Chin behind them, or expect the stun blast that drops them to the deck. 

She stares at Skywalker’s unmoving body for a long moment. 

“Mara?” Her head snaps up at Karrde’s voice. 

“I’ll be in my cabin.” She stands and stalks around the still forms of Skywalker and his dæmon, heading to the small cabin she was allotted on her promotion to Karrde’s Second. Her knees give out after the cabin door slides shut behind her, and she slumps to the ground, leaning against the wall. 

The visions, the impulses, the dreams had all vanished on Myrkr. It felt like coming up for air after being submerged in a murky, turbulent sea. Karrde had given her a place, a purpose, a life not bound by who she had been and what her master had commanded her to do. 

Asyr puts his face up to hers. “I don’t want them back,” she says. “I don’t want them back.” She hates the traitorous words, wishing she could swallow them back even as they spill from her mouth. Asyr begins to purr loudly, as if trying to drown out her whispers. 

“Will it all go away if we kill him?” Asyr asks the question that’s weighed on her mind for nearly five years. 

“I don’t know.” She runs shaking hands along his white streak, the fur stiffening under her fingers. “I don’t know.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mara joins Karrde crew under different circumstances in Legends, (and a few years later in the timeline) in the story “First Contact,” by Timothy Zahn.
> 
> Karrde’s Bellaris is another space bird based on a real bird, in this case, a raven or corvid. 
> 
> The assassin that Mara kills has a [hawk-bat](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hawk-bat/Legends) dæmon.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place during _The Thrawn Trilogy,_ and skips past the entirety of _Dark Forces Rising_ and a lot of plot. It might help to be familiar with the outline of the story. 
> 
> There’s a [summary of the series here,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Admiral_Thrawn#Thrawn_trilogy_\(1991%E2%80%931993\)) and wookieepedia has overviews of the individual books: [Heir the Empire,](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Heir_to_the_Empire) [Dark Forces Rising,](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Force_Rising) and [The Last Command.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Last_Command)

Luke isn’t sure what to make of this strange woman who clearly despises him more than anything else in the wide galaxy. Even without the Force, even before she tells him she plans to kill him, he can read it in every line of her face, and whenever her dæmon’s bright green eyes fix on Miré he bristles with barely contained loathing. 

Luke just wishes he knew  _ why _ . 

While there isn’t any shortage of Imperials and former Imperials who would probably love to take a crack at the man who helped bring down the Empire, Jade’s anger feels too personal to have been that of a slighted loyalist. There’s no need for the snide comments, or for her to have personally pursued him when he attempted to escape in a stolen skipray, to the point of crashing her ship alongside his in the depths of Myrkr’s jungle. 

She  _ can _ be reasoned with, however, and he manages to talk her into sparing him for the duration of a trek across Myrkr back to the  _ (relative) _ safely of Talon Karrde’s headquarters. If the Imperial scouts or the allegedly aggressive wildlife don’t find them first. 

“Asyr will scout ahead for vornskrs,” she says. “But don’t think I can’t shoot you before your dæmon gets close.” 

Luke doesn’t promise that he or Miré won’t try anything, because if given the chance, they  _ will, _ and she knows it. His first botched escape is the reason they’re all stranded out here, days from civilization. She signals to her dæmon and without a word he darts away from the clearing and disappears into the forest. Luke gapes, just a little. 

“Thought you were the only one, didn’t you,” Jade sneers. 

“No,” he says, shaking his head and closing his mouth. “There are witches on Dathomir who—never mind. But there aren’t many people who can do that. Your tooka—”

“Felinx,” she snaps. 

“Okay, fine,  _ felinx.”  _

Miré clicks her teeth together, a sure sign that she’s annoyed—annoyed with this woman who reeks of bitterness and her aloof dæmon. Luke puts a hand on Miré’s head, calming her, and by extension, himself. 

His exasperation flares up again when she refuses to lend him his lightsaber to cut branches to make a travois to drag Artoo through the woods—then he finds himself gaping once more as she uses his lightsaber like she was born to it, though he manages to shut his mouth again without prompting. Karrde had implied that Jade was Force-sensitive, but it’s clear to Luke that she’s had  _ training. _ But from whom? Who  _ is _ she? Luke has dozens of questions, but the fact that Jade would rather cut him to pieces and feed him to a vornskr than  _ talk _ is not lost on him. 

A three-day trek through a forest populated by creatures who want nothing more than to eat him and a mysterious Force-sensitive who wants to kill him  _ wasn’t _ the situation Luke expected to find himself in when his ship was disabled in deep space—but it’s not really any stranger than the sort of scrapes he usually finds himself in. 

It’s slow going. Artoo does what he can, but most of the time Luke has to haul him over rocky outcroppings, clearings pitted with treacherous potholes, and roots that ripple over the ground. All without the use of the Force. 

The forest is thick with the bizarre furry lizards that apparently block his ability to sense and use the Force.  _ Ysalamiri, _ Karrde had called them, and Luke had plenty of time on his hands now to wonder  _ how _ the creatures affect Force sensitivity in this manner, and why he’s never heard of them before. It’s strange, having one of his senses blinded, and it’s becoming clear how much he relies on his abilities to sweep aside any inconveniences that stand in his way, and how humbling it is to have that power taken away from him. 

When they camp for the night in a clearing, Jade sneaks stim pills out of the medkit and braces herself against a tree, blaster drawn. Her dæmon paces restlessly, looping around and around the clearing. Luke figures he might as well sleep, even though his thoughts keep turning back to his captor. 

_ Mara Jade and her dæmon Asyr. _ He searches his memory, trying to recover any scrap of information linked to her name or face—and he doesn’t come up with anything. Not a twinge from the Force, either, not on this planet, with its trees laden with ysalamiri. 

* * *

After two days, he just wants to get out of the forest and back into the sky. 

When Jade calls for a break at midday, Luke doesn’t argue. It’s exhausting work, dragging Artoo through the forest. He sits down at the base of a tree, leaning back and letting his head loll against the trunk, Miré sprawling at his feet. Jade stands at the other end of the clearing, her head bent over the small nav computer, one of the travel packs at her feet. Her dæmon is off on patrol again. She’s been jittery and even more touchy than usual today—which is saying something. Luke hopes that the nav computer confirms that they’re near the end of their trek. He doesn’t think any of them can take this much longer. 

He lets his eyes drift shut—just because  _ she _ can’t relax doesn’t he  _ won’t _ —when Artoo’s shriek cuts through the clearing. Luke opens his eyes in time to see a vornskr leap from the trees at Jade. It lands heavily on her back, driving her face-first onto the ground, long talons sinking into her shoulders. She lays underneath the vornskr, unmoving. 

He leaps to his feet, keenly aware of the fact that Jade stripped him of all weapons—except for one. Miré rises beside him, body tense with coiled power. She bares her teeth, muzzle curling back and exposing frightening rows of teeth made for tearing flesh from bones. A growl, deep and unsettling, rattles out of her throat. 

At the sound, the vornskr, about to tear into the back of Jade’s neck, raises its head and flashes its own teeth in reply. Miré stalks forward slowly, hackles raised, her growl a continuous rumble that Luke can feel in his bones. The vornskr shifts its weight but doesn’t back down, hesitant to give up its prey, even in the face of a challenge. 

With a yell, Jade thrashes underneath the vornskr, twisting an arm up, hand hooked for the beast’s throat. It bats her down with a swipe of its claws. She goes limp again, though Luke can see the rise and fall of her back as she breathes heavily. Taking advantage of the distraction, Miré surges forward, driving the vornskr off of Jade. 

As the creature scrambles sideways, its barbed tail whips out at Miré’s side. The barbs fail to penetrate her thick coat of fur on the first strike, but the second bites into her left leg. Luke cries out as a line of fire lances across his arm, an echo of Miré’s pain. Miré doesn’t even acknowledge it, snarling forward to slash at the vornskr’s side. 

Pride swells in Luke’s chest as he watches his dæmon dance around the vornskr with a predator’s grace. She leaps away from a swipe of the vornskr’s talons, and lands a blow of her own, claws tearing into the creature’s side. Miré is Luke’s soul, and the exhilarating thrill of the fight—a fight to  _ protect _ —courses through him as well. 

It’s over quickly. Miré ducks under another crack of the vornskr’s whip-like tail and then leaps up, sinking her teeth into its shoulder. The creature shrieks as it falls under her weight. Miré pins the vornskr to the ground and tears out its throat. Luke lets out a breath, coming back to himself as the spell the fight cast over him is broken. 

_ Mara. _ She still lies prone on the edge of the clearing. Luke darts over to the abandoned travel pack, digging out the small medikit.  _ Antiseptic, bandages, bacta. _ He pauses for a moment over the open medikit, alarmed at how many stim pills are missing. No wonder she seems on edge. 

Well. More on edge than usual. 

When he leans over to inspect her injuries, he’s met with the barrel of a blaster, aimed point-blank at his face. 

_ This _ again. 

“I don’t believe you,” he says sourly as he raises his hands. “Or didn’t you notice that Miré and I just saved your life?” 

“I noticed. Thanks.” She pushes herself up, wincing. Blood seeps through the lacerations on her flight suit. 

“You’re hurt. Let me help you with the bandages, at least.” 

“Don’t touch me,” she snaps. “Back—back against the tree.” 

Luke blows out a breath between his teeth and puts his back against a tree half a dozen paces from Jade. She’s as stubborn as Leia, or—he has to admit, with some chagrin—himself. 

Miré pads over and flops down, putting her head in his lap. Her muzzle is streaked crimson. Hopefully, they’ll come across a stream soon and he can wash off the blood that stains her fur. Luke sighs and begins to examine her for injuries, but the scratches left by the vornskr’s tail hardly seem to bother her. They should get moving as soon as Jade’s able, before the body of the vornskr attracts other predators. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Jade strips off the top of her olive flight suit and begins to dab bacta onto the gouges in her arm. Her hands are shaking badly. Luke balls his own hands into fists behind the bulk of Miré’s body. If she wasn’t so intent on her hatred, he could  _ help.  _

“I just want to know what happened to you,” he finally says. 

She still manages to pin him with a look of pure rage even through the pain and days of exhaustion wearing away at her.  _ “You _ happened to me,” she says. “You came out of a grubby sixth-rate farm on a tenth-rate planet, and destroyed my life. And you don’t have the faintest idea who I am, do you?” 

Luke can only shake his head, speechless. Then her story comes out, voice clipped with years of anger and anguish he can sense even without the Force. Who she had been before the Emperor’s death, why she blames him for her master’s downfall, and what that loss had done to her. 

“I spent years sloshing around the rotten underfringes of the galaxy, doing whatever I could,” she concludes. Her head droops as though the weight of those years were still pulling her down. There’s more to the story she isn’t telling him, and some of her accusations ring false, even if she believes them to her core, but this isn’t the time to argue details. 

Before he can speak, she jerks her head up again to glare at him, her anger rekindling. “I’m not going to let you ruin everything, not again—” 

Artoo whistles a warning and Miré’s head swivels his direction—only to drop back down into Luke’s lap when Asyr streaks into the clearing, heading straight for Jade. Luke looks down and scratches Miré behind the ears, giving Jade the little privacy he can offer for her reunion with her dæmon. 

When he looks directly at them he can tell that her dæmon’s presence has calmed her somewhat. Her hands have stopped shaking so visibly. They speak in low tones that didn’t quite carry across the clearing, and then Asyr stalks over to the body of the vornskr and examines it, sniffing at the corpse. 

“We need to get moving.” Jade stands, blaster trained on him again. 

She’s right. Luke sighs and goes to prepare Artoo for the hike. 

* * *

After they emerge from the forest and fight their way through Hyllyard City—which will never be the same, Luke thinks with a wince, recalling the massive archway he had reduced to rubble—he finds himself back on the  _ Falcon, _ back in hyperspace, hurtling toward the next crisis. 

But his head’s still back on Myrkr, back in the forest with its extraordinary wildlife. Back with Mara Jade and Asyr. 

When she found him in a dead ship in deep space, she could have left him to die, or run cannon fire or a heavy current through the X-wing and killed him instantly. Instead, she saved his life. She shot every vornskr that had attacked him, she hadn’t betrayed him to the stormtrooper patrols, and she’d helped them all escape to safety. Sure, she’d threatened to kill him—repeatedly, and with great sincerity—but she never pulled the trigger. That was enough to give him hope. 

“I hope we meet them again,” he says softly. 

Miré lifts her head and gives him a look that makes him chuckle and rub her ears. “With our luck, I think that’s probably likely.” She yawns, unconcerned by his brooding. “Her dæmon’s a snob.” 

Luke makes a noncommittal hum, and Miré gives him another  _ look _ before laying her head down on her paws. Luke sighs and activates his datapad, pulling up the file on Jomark. Jedi Master Joruus C'baoth, who somehow escaped the purge, is rumored to reside there. As soon as he can get his x-wing repaired Luke intends to search for him. Perhaps he has answers to the questions that have been weighing on Luke ever since Ben finally faded out of his life. 

* * *

Through the window in her room—her cell—Mara watches as a murky haze settles over Coruscant, smothering the city in a thick orange glow, blurring the sharp edges of the cloudcutter spires. Mara lifts a hand and presses it to the transparisteel, the slick plane cool against her palm. Behind her, Asyr paces through the small room, his tail sweeping back and forth restlessly. She takes in a deep breath and lets it out, the transparisteel fogging for a moment and clearing again. 

Ever since Thrawn’s forces drove them off of Myrkr in the wake of his hunt for Skywalker, they’ve been fleeing across the galaxy—her and Asyr, Karrde and his people. First to Rishi, then to Abregado-Rae, where she’d kriffed everything up with Thrawn and betrayed Karrde. 

(Thrawn had let his Noghri bodyguard  _ touch _ Asyr—instructed him to  _ hold Asyr down _ —until Mara had collapsed at Thrawn’s feet, the fight gone out of her. All while that bastard had watched her coldly, his pure white viper dæmon sliding around the neck she attempted—and failed—to crush with her bare hands. 

Her stomach convulses at the memory, and she presses her forehead against the cool pane, clenching her jaw and fighting down the bile.)

Aves had called her a traitor, and he wasn’t wrong. It was her fault that Karrde ended up in a cell on the  _ Chimaera _ , and her duty to free him. With all other options stripped from her, she’d gone to Skywalker, determined to drag him away from the insane Jedi Master he’d dug up on some obscure planet, and threaten or blackmail him into joining her rescue mission. 

He’d said yes, without reservation. He’d followed her lead, put his life on the line for a risky rescue mission, just because she’d asked. (He wasn’t the shadow-ghoul she’d imagined for the last five years. Not at all). 

Asyr pauses to rub the long length of his body against her hip before he returns to his pacing. It helps to go over the timeline in her head, laying it all out in sequence, reinforcing her memories and filling in the gaps that blur in her mind. Retrieve Skywalker, rescue Karrde, and then—the battle for the Katana fleet. 

Mara found herself fighting Thrawn’s forces alongside New Republic starfighters, as well as Karrde’s crew, reluctantly dragged into the battle at their chief's command. Asyr had remained with Karrde aboard one of the New Republic’s battleships, and had witnessed the power struggle between Leia Organa Solo and Councilor Fey’lya over control of the fleet. 

With a well-timed distraction, Asyr had helped Karrde turn the tide in Organa Solo’s favor, and helped Karrde defend her against the incensed Bothan. Mara and Asyr joined the New Republic's cause because they owed it to Karrde, and because they didn’t want the Katana to fall into Thrawn’s hands. Not because they cared about the New Republic’s survival or Organa Solo’s cause. 

They’d lost the battle—but not before Mara had taken out a star destroyer with her. A grim smile flickers over her face at the memory. When her ejector seat had exploded out of her Z-95, she knew she was dead, her last thought a plea— _ I’m sorry, Asyr, I’m sorry— _ and then darkness. 

It was Skywalker who had pulled her from the chaos and debris of the battle. Asyr had been at Karrde’s side when she’d been hit and remained unconscious until she woke up on Coruscant. The following month, spent in a coma, was an infuriating blank. She hadn’t even learned the outcome of the battle until she’d woken up. The New Republic lost control of the bulk of the Katana fleet, the battleships now in Thrawn’s possession, even if he couldn’t possibly have the manpower to fly it. 

Then, having woken from her month-long coma, Mara found herself stranded on Coruscant, waiting for Karrde to retrieve her. Until a few days ago, she was ensconced in a comfortable apartment in the residential wing—which put her in exactly the right place to sense the Imperial commandos who snuck into the Palace to kidnap the infant Solo twins. 

Mara knows the layout of the palace better than nearly anyone else still living. The hidden passages that threaded through every floor and had given her the means to escape Isard now gave her an edge on the kidnappers—the key to taking them out. She simply snuck up behind the Imperials and picked them off, one by one. 

She should have expected what happened next—Thrawn’s men pinned the blame on her and Palace Security arrested her as a suspect. The Solos believe that Thrawn’s men were working on behalf of Joruus C’baoth, crazed Jedi Master haunting the edges of Thrawn’s campaign, but that doesn’t make her any less complicit in the eyes of Palace Sec. She and Asyr were moved to a single-living space—considerably smaller than the airy apartment that Winter Retrac had chosen for her after her stay in the med center—with a G-2RD guard droid outside the door. 

They’ve spent the last two days questioning her. The New Republic interrogation procedure is laughable, but it won’t be long until they work out that she used to be a high ranking Imperial agent, and then what—execution? 

Skywalker hasn’t told them what he knows about her past. Not yet. It’s only a matter of time. 

Faint images swim before her eyes, fragments of the visions that have been haunting her for the last five years. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. 

With a snarl, she smashes her head against the window frame and the shock of impact scatters the words like the smattering of stars across her vision. She rocks her head back in order to slam it against the frame again, but a flash of pain jolts up her leg as Asyr nips at the skin through her loose pants, pulling her out of her daze. “Stop that,” he growls. 

Her breath catches in her throat and comes out rough and shaky. Everything is splintering apart again. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. 

She  _ will _ kill him—she  _ has _ to—she has no choice. Her master’s voice will never leave her if she doesn’t. Even letting Skywalker live this long is a betrayal of her master’s trust. Even if—even if she doesn’t want him to die.

No,  _ no. _ With a slap of her palm against the window, she chases away the doubt that creeps in like a fog. Skywalker has to pay for ruining her life. She  _ wants _ to kill him. It’s  _ her _ choice. 

A rap on the door causes her to jump, and Asyr makes a startled sound, the white ridge of hair along his back stiffening for a second before he twists around and licks it flat again. Mara moves away from the window to stand at his side, waiting for her visitor to open the door. Since being placed under house arrest, she doesn’t have the right to turn anyone away. It’s probably Bremen again, back to ask sugar-coated questions—

It isn’t Palace Security. Her visitor is Leia Organa Solo. 

Mara frowns. The last time Organa Solo visited her in the palace, her intention to kill Skywalker had spilled out of her like a tipped oil rig. Although the other woman didn’t act alarmed at Mara’s pronouncement, she didn’t expect Organa Solo to ever speak to her again. She threatened to kill the woman’s  _ brother. _ And yet—here she is. 

If a wolf dæmon looks large next to Skywalker, it looks  _ enormous  _ next to his sister’s slight figure. The wolf’s fur is as pitch black as Asyr’s, and he has a canny look in his eyes, which are as pure blue as Skywalker’s.  _ Miré’s eyes are golden, _ Mara thinks. Asyr flicks an ear and looks away disdainfully, refusing to be intimidated by the larger dæmon. 

Though they’d never met until shortly before the battle for the Katana fleet, Mara remembers Organa Solo from the Imperial Senate, where she had the reputation for being sharped-tongued and arrogant during her short senatorial career. She isn’t that young upstart anymore; she isn’t even the heroic figurehead of the Rebellion anymore. 

“Hello, Mara. I just stopped in to see how you were doing.” 

Mara doesn’t believe her for a second. “I’m just terrific,” she says 

Organa Solo takes her tart replies in stride, answering with the same diplomatic patience she displayed the last time she visited Mara. As well as a heavy dose of that insufferable Jedi serenity—due to her brother’s training, no doubt. She apologizes,  _ again, _ and offers empty promises to secure Mara’s release. 

“I should have kept pushing Winter to get me a ship out of here,” Mara mutters. 

“If you had, the twins and I would be in Imperial hands now,” Organa Solo says softly. “On our way to be the prizes of his Jedi Master C’baoth.” 

Mara has to look away from the sincerity in those brown eyes. “I’m doing fine,” she says, “you’re going to try to get me out, and we’re all glad I saved you from C’baoth. Was there anything else?” 

“Not really. I just wanted to ask why you did it.”

“I don’t know,” Mara says. It sounds feeble, even to her ears, but it isn’t a lie. She still hasn’t worked out why she followed the impulse to save the twins. In the moment, it hadn’t even occurred to her that there might be any other option. Perhaps she’s getting soft. 

Then Organa Solo shifts her line of questioning, just as she’d done on her last visit. She asks gentle, probing questions about Mara’s past.  _ Where did you come from, Mara? What about your parents? How old were you when you were taken from them? Do you remember them?  _

“I don’t remember their names,” Mara says. All of her answers to Organa Solo’s questions feel inadequate. Her eyes are hot, prickling, and Asyr leans into her, a low purr vibrating through his fur. “I don’t remember their names or the names of their dæmons.”

She remembers her first meeting with the Emperor, remembers her first glimpse of Coruscant, an immense glittering expanse through the transparisteel windows of a ship. Her first rooms in the Palace, her first tutors. She can’t remember where she came from. 

“The Force gave me a vision of my mother,” Organa Solo says. “Even though I was too young to remember when she died. Perhaps—”

“No.” 

“For whatever it’s worth,” Organa Solo says quietly after a moment’s silence. “I think it’s worth knowing.” 

Mara snorts. Easy to say, when your birth parents turn out to be a legendary Jedi and the founding mother of the Rebellion. The vague figures in Mara’s memories aren’t figures of great purpose or nobility. They’re only ghosts. 

“I doubt the Emperor gave them any choice in the matter,” Organa Solo says. “What about you, Mara? Did you have any choice?”

“So that’s where you’re going with this.” Mara expects a flash of anger, “You think I risked my life for your twins because I got taken from my home the same way?”

“Were you?”

“It wasn’t like that,” she bites out, looking away. “That has nothing to do with it. I just didn’t want C’baoth—didn’t want him getting his hands on them. Just leave it at that.”

Organa Solo searches her face. “Alright,” she says, finally backing down. “But if you ever want to talk more about it—”

“I know where to find you,” Mara sneers, looking away. 

Before she leaves, Organa Solo says, “I’d better get downstairs to the briefing. See what Thrawn’s fighting clones are up to today.”

_ Clones?  _ Mara’s head snaps up again. She’d spent a month in the medical wing of the Palace, and no one had mentioned  _ clones _ to her. “What fighting clones?”

“You don’t know?” Organa Solo frowns, her dæmon cocking his head to the side. “The Empire’s found some Spaarti cloning cylinders somewhere. They’ve been turning out huge numbers of clones to fight against us.”

“No one told me,” Mara whispers. 

The cloning centers were all decommissioned or destroyed after the Clone Wars, everyone knows that. There were always rumors of secret Imperial laboratories where horrifying experiments were done on clones and their dæmons, but Mara knows that most of those labs never existed, or hadn’t survived the war. Only one place remained that had the equipment and was still untouched by the New Republic. 

Though Mara had been there only once, she remembers the vast chamber at the heart of a mountain, hundreds of Spaarti cloning cylinders lining the cavern walls. Below the cloning facility, there was an archive filled with confiscated equipment and classified materials deemed too sensitive to be stored on Coruscant, and above a throne room crafted for the Emperor himself, a dark retreat where he could sit in contemplation, a glittering holo of the galaxy spread out in front of him. 

All at Thrawn’s fingertips. That  _ bastard. _

The existence of Wayland was a sacred trust, knowledge that the Emperor had only gifted to a few individuals. It had been entrusted to her, because her master knew that she would die before letting the information slip. Mara doesn’t know how Thrawn found it, but she has no doubt that he did, and that the Spaarti cylinders on Wayland would keep his army supplied for decades. With an endless army, the Katana fleet, and his tactical genius, Thrawn would probably win the war. They were all in danger—her and Asyr, Karrde, Organa Solo, Skywalker...

She opens her mouth and betrays her master once again. 

* * *

Nights on Wayland are chilly; colder than Myrkr. Enough to need a jacket at night, and enough to justify a small fire shaded by a camo screen in case of Imperial patrols. Luke hunches close to the fire, Miré keeping his back warm. He knows he shouldn’t complain. Not after Hoth. 

So he only complains a  _ little _ bit, and Han and Lando give him a hard time, comparing stories about freezing winter nights on the streets of Corellia or the ice moons of Oseon. It’s nice. Like old times. 

The Noghri who have allied themselves with his family have assigned themselves to guard the perimeter of the campsite and patrol the surrounding forest, and although they all take shifts as well, Luke gets the impression that the Noghri are just humoring them. They flit like shadows along the edges of the campsite. 

As Luke listens to Han and Chewie bicker over dinner preparations, he senses something of the same forced cheeriness that hangs over a gathering before a battle. Just like the old times. They have a general idea of what waits for them when they reach Mount Tantiss—a fortified stronghold guarded by a small imperial garrison, and—most troubling—C’baoth. 

Last night C’baoth had sent a message through the Force, slipping into Luke and Mara’s minds. He intends to make them both his acolytes, and while Luke doesn’t believe C’baoth can force them to bow to him against their will, he knows that C’baoth’s decades of training far outstrip his own. C’baoth can wield the Force in ways that Luke can’t even imagine, and he’s dangerously unstable. 

Mara had been badly shaken by C’baoth’s threats, but Luke senses that there’s more troubling her than the upcoming confrontation with the unstable Jedi Master. He catches her watching him from across the campsite, an odd expression on her face. Asyr glances in Luke’s direction as well, his eyes flashing in the reflected light from the campfire. After they’ve eaten and Han, Chewie, and Lando have started up a sabbac game on the far side of the fire, she sits down beside him. Her dæmon drapes himself across her lap, watching Miré with a suspicious expression on his face. 

“I was talking to one of the Noghri,” she says. “He told me that Vader was your father.” 

“He was,” Luke says. “When Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side, he became Palpatine’s servant and took on the mantle of Lord Vader.” 

It’s an open secret among his family and a few close friends who are practically family. He’s not ashamed that Vader is his father, but Leia is wary about public reaction to the fact. Luke believes that Mara has the right to know. She listens intently as Luke tells her the story of what had actually happened on the Death Star. 

“He never told me,” she says. “He lied to me. Even after he died, he lied—” She breaks off, turns her head so that he can’t see the struggle written on her features. It’s still hard for her to admit the extent to which Palpatine had manipulated her, and the truth hits her with bruising force, again and again. 

After a moment she says, “I’d wondered how he died. It wasn’t in the visions he put in my head.” 

“My father turned back to the light, right before he died,” Luke said. “He was just a man, under the mask.”

Mara looks back at him with an expression of disbelief. “He didn’t have a dæmon,” she says, as if that says it all. 

Luke supposes it does, but he can’t help but speak up for poor Aephelia. “He did have a dæmon. She was still alive, trapped in a stasis box under his life support monitor.” 

Mara’s face slackens in horror. “I didn’t know that,” she says. “That’s…was she injured?” 

“Yes, but I think it was a punishment. Torture.” 

“Who would—?” 

Luke doesn’t say anything because the answer is obvious. The disgust on her face slides into shock as she realizes who had been the architect of Vader’s pain. 

He tells her the few details he knows, pieced together from things that Obi-Wan and Anakin have told him. How Anakin Skywalker—Vader—was nearly killed in a duel on the planet Mustafar, and it left him and his dæmon disfigured for the rest of their lives. Palpatine had imprisoned Aephelia in the box over Vader’s chest, never to take flight again. He wonders from time to time if having his dæmon in stasis was slowly killing his father; wonders whether he would have died without his immense strength in the Force, or if he clung to life through sheer rage. 

“He still did monstrous things,” Luke says. “Even though monstrous things were done to him.” 

“He separated us,” Mara says softly as Asyr rubbed his body against hers, an aggressive purr rumbling out of him. 

Luke stares in horror at her now. As she describes the experience her voice goes flat and distant, as though she were reading off a report. 

“The Emperor told me it was a Jedi technique,” she says as she finishes her story, her eyes on Miré. 

“It is—but not done that way. Masters used to guide their students through the process.” It must have been reassuring to have someone beside you, to hold onto through the pain. 

“The Emperor was with me,” Mara says, making a vague grasping gesture with her hand. “In my head.” 

He couldn’t imagine Palpatine being a comfort to anyone. “Did he guide you through the process? Explain what would happen?” 

“Why would he? What was there to explain?” 

He gapes at her for a moment. “But the pain—you must have been terrified—”

Asyr’s fur goes up and he hisses at Luke. 

“It was a test. I passed.” Mara stands and stalks away, Asyr following her like a shadow. 

* * *

  
  


The floor of the throne room is cold under Mara’s hands as she attempts to push herself up off of the ground. Her muscles spasm with the aftereffects of C’baoth’s lightning and she collapses again, her body twitching spasmodically. On the floor beside her, Asyr shakes his head as though trying to clear his vision and makes a pitiful sound. As if from a distance, she can hear someone moaning and it takes longer than it should for her to realize that it’s her. 

A hand on her shoulder. Warmth floods into her and Mara gasps in relief. Skywalker’s fingers tighten as he pulls the pain out of her, easing her wrenched, trembling muscles. 

She gets her hands under her again and manages to prop herself up against the guardrail that she’d slammed against when the Force lightning had stuck her in the chest. Her head swims, vision going soft and blurry, darkness creeping along the edges of her sight. 

Skywalker shouts something at C’baoth, but it seems far away. Irrelevant. Consciousness slides out of her grasp like water through her fingers. 

She jolts awake again when a wobbly Asyr butts his head into her side. From where she’s slumped against the guardrail she has a clear view of the throne room with its sweep of holographic stars shimmering overhead. 

Sofonisba’s golden eyes fix on hers for a moment, and then the dæmon looks away, flicking an ear in an air of boredom. The large tusk cat lounges at C’baoth’s side, though her muscles are tensed, as though she might spring at the slightest provocation. 

If not for the wild glint in his eyes, C’baoth might resemble an elderly scholar in plain brown robes, utterly out of place on her former master’s gleaming throne. She struggles to absorb the rambling speech he gives, but when he gestures grandly to the darkened entrance below the throne, her eyes follow the movement. 

Skywalker stands, frozen, staring at the figure emerging from the wings. A figure that stands exactly as tall as he does, with a face the mirror of his, though perhaps less marked by the passage of time. Mara blinks; narrows her eyes at the figure in the brown robes that match C'baoth’s. It takes nearly a minute for her to grasp the implication of what C’baoth’s done. An empty puppet for C’baoth to toy with, wearing Skywalker’s face. 

As the clone steps towards Skywalker, she looks for a wolf at his side, but sees nothing but shadows.  _ The clone doesn’t have a dæmon. _ Mara’s skin crawls, her mind protesting at the wrongness of a human without a dæmon.  _ Like Vader, _ she thinks, repulsion slithering down her back, but knowing what she does now,  _ this is worse. _ That— _ thing _ that C’baoth has created is an unnatural abomination. 

She turns her head to look at Skywalker’s reaction and is surprised to see pity there. It takes her a moment to realize that he sees a poor creature without a soul, a half-formed living being that didn’t ask to be brought into this world and can’t fight against C’boath’s control. It doesn’t know any better. 

“This duel must be to the death,” C’baoth intones. “It must be weapon against weapon, mind against mind, soul against soul. Anything less will not bring you to the knowledge you must have if you are to properly serve me.”

Mara should have put a blaster bolt through his head back on Jomark. 

The clone ignites a lightsaber and lifts it, the blue glow washing over his vacant features. With an inhuman howl, he rushes toward Luke. Luke leaps away, his lightsaber a blur of bright green as he swings it up in defense. Miré circles around the fighters, cautious of getting too close to the lightsabers. In a series of rapid maneuvers, Luke leads the clone up onto a catwalk overhead, where the battle continues above the wide-open cavern of the throne room. Below the catwalk, Miré paces back and forth, trying to follow the course of the duel. 

There’s a strange pressure, a buzzing in Mara’s mind. The deep hum and crash of lightsabers striking and sweeping through the air fills her head, nearly drowning out the odd, echoing hum. The stink of ozone still hangs in the air, triggering memories that aren’t her own. Cold seeps through her as she recognizes the scene playing out in front of her. The visions—the endless loop of nightmares her master had forced into her head—repeating once again. 

A lightsaber duel ranges across a darkened throne room, brights showers of orange sparks raining down whenever a blade makes contact with the metal frame of the catwalk. C’baoth stands in the Emperor’s place on his throne, silhouetted by stars, surveying the throne room as though it were a dejarik board, with every piece under his control. Just like her master. Mara’s breath catches in her throat. 

But  _ this _ time—this time she isn’t a disembodied spectator. She has the choice to join Skywalker’s fight—or to join the clone and kill him. If she can make it to her feet. 

Mara sucks in one ragged, hiccuping breath after another. Asyr senses the shift in her thoughts and stops trying to burrow into her side. He tenses, ready to move as soon as they can find their opening. 

On the other side of the platform, Miré stops her frantic circling, and with a snarl, charges at the dais where C'baoth sits. Sofonisba leaps to her feet but the Jedi master merely waves a hand, and a hunk of the catwalk over his head shears away and hurls through the air toward Miré. It slams into her side, forcing her to the ground. 

“Miré!” Skywalker shouts, staggering. He barely manages to deflect the next blow from the clone’s lightsaber. “Miré!” 

Miré lets out a whine from under the twisted metal. She sounds injured. The heap of catwalk pinning Miré to the floor shudders but the wolf isn’t strong enough to push it aside. C’baoth must be weighing it down through the Force. Mara doesn’t know how Skywalker can still fight with his dæmon in distress, but she doesn’t think he can keep it up for long. She can sense his panic, a sour note under the buzzing in her head. 

Mara doesn’t want him to die. 

The insane Jedi seems merely amused, as if this is all some sort of sick game to him. He scolds Mara like she’s an unruly child when she curses at him, laughs at her attempt to keep him from plucking thoughts out of her head. Decades of study and practice have given C’baoth a mastery of the Force far beyond what she or Skywalker can manage. This includes the ability to read her intentions the second they form in her mind, all while orchestrating the battle between Skywalker and his clone over their head. But he must have a limit, Mara thinks—if she only could think of some distraction—

“She has come,” C’baoth says dreamily, his gaze drifting away from duel. “Just as I knew she would. She is here, Mara Jade.” 

On the far end of the narrow promenade that leads up to the throne, the turbolift doors that lead to the throne room slide open to reveal Organa Solo, her husband, and... _ Karrde? _ Mara squints at him, half expecting all three figures to waver and vanish, figments of her Force-lighting-friend brain. Solo has his blaster drawn and pointed at C’baoth as he steps through the door. Behind him, his wife holds a baster in one hand and her lightsaber in the other. 

“Welcome, my new apprentice!” C’baoth calls, unhinged joy suffusing his voice as the three figures move out of the turbolift and onto the promenade. “Come to me, Leia Organa Solo. I will teach you the true ways of the Force.”

Mara hears a snap of wings as Bellaris swoops over her head. The daemon hovers at the very edge of the invisible tether that links her to her human; on the far end of the promenade, Karrde grips the railing with white-knuckled hands, sweat standing out on his brow. 

“Leia had a vision,” Bellaris explains. “We came to warn you—” Whatever else she meant to pass along is drowned out by the crack of Solo’s blaster. 

C’baoth’s flimsy-thin control snaps. Batting aside the bolts with a wave of his hand, he screams, the sound piercing and inhuman. The force of his temper tantrum explodes out of him like a physical blow, hitting Mara and Asyr and slamming them back against the railing. It echoes around the room, as though he could fill the entire cavern with his rage. 

When the sound finally dies away, the shriek of metal grinding against metal takes its place as C’baoth tears the catwalk crossing directly above the promenade loose with a grand sweep of his arm, and tosses it at the three figures standing there. It lands on Organa Solo and her husband, slamming them to the floor and pinning them under its bulk. Karrde manages to escape being hit, but the twisted mass of metal blocks off the promenade, and he’s on the wrong side to be any help to Mara. 

“Leia!” Skywalker shouts over the screech of his lightsaber locked against the clone’s blue blade. When his sister doesn’t respond, Skywalker launches a furious attack, beating the clone back until his double is forced to retreat up a guard tower at the end of the catwalk. 

“Let them leave,” Skywalker calls down to C’baoth from his perch on the catwalk. “All of them. Now. Mara, too.” 

Mara doesn’t meet his eyes as he looks down at her. She’s watching the insane Jedi Master, who gazes up at Skywalker, intrigued. 

“And if I do?” C’baoth says. 

His clone puppet stands down, lightsaber lowered, waiting, as C’baoth considers Skywalker. Solo’s dæmon has her teeth in Solo’s jacket and is trying to drag the groaning man out from under the fallen catwalk; Organa Solo’s dæmon gets woozily to his feet as his human regains consciousness. The catwalk on top of Mire shakes again as she tries to dislodge C’baoth’s grip on the metal frame trapping her. 

Mara sees her chance. There are too many pieces on the board now for C’baoth, with his rapidly fraying mental state, to control. 

Skywalker shuts down his lightsaber in a gesture of capitulation.  _ Idiot. _ He leaps over the edge on the catwalk and faces C’baoth. With a sweep of his arm, the metal on top of Miré twists away, freeing his dæmon. She slinks to his side and sits quietly, echoing his mien of surrender. The clone follows him off the catwalk and stands midway between Skywalker and C’baoth, his face vacant. 

“Let them go,” Skywalker says, “and I’ll stay.” 

“You ask too much,” C’baoth says. There’s a dangerous edge to his voice. “Mara Jade will be mine. Must be mine. It is the destiny demanded of her by the Force. Not even you may trifle with that.” 

But he isn’t even looking at her, and doesn’t see Asyr dart forward into the wreckage on the promenade, returning moments later with Organa Solo’s lightsaber in his mouth. As Mara’s hand closes around the cool cylinder, she feels everything around her slide into place. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. The words pound in her head like a drumbeat. Fragments from her nightmare swim in front of her like layers of holos flickering across her vision. Vader and Luke, fighting each other, fighting the Emperor, dying and killing and dying again. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. She keeps moving forward into the vision, striding across the throne room, claiming her place in the scene she’s watched thousands of times in her head. Organa Solo’s lightsaber hums in her hand. 

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. She ducks under the sweep of the clone’s lightsaber and stares into the clone’s face—Skywalker’s face. The familiar lines of face she had dreamed about, the same blue eyes now only lit with C’aboth’s madness. He’s only a puppet, with his master’s voice in his head, a voice he can hear anywhere in the galaxy, a voice that will haunt his dreams after his master dies— _ No. Never again.  _

YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. She gives in to the command, lets it thrum through her veins and guide her hands. The clone’s face contorts in horror, mouth gaping in shock as she cuts the lightsaber through him and he falls dead. 

Everything goes quiet. 

Mara stares at the body at her feet, the body of Luke Skywalker. His face is slack; his lifeless eyes stare back, flat and soulless. 

It’s over. She made her choice. Her mind is her own again. Even the strange hum has faded away. 

Mara drops to her knees, a long breath rushing out of her. Asyr pushes into her arms, purring aggressively and nuzzling at her face. She looks up and Luke is there. 

“Thank you,” he says. “Are you alright?” His hand is warm in hers as he pulls her to her feet. 

But the nightmare isn’t over yet. Mara looks past him to the figure that stands on the dais above them, insanity whirling around him. Her master—

No,  _ C’baoth. _ Her master is dead. 

No—it doesn’t matter which one of them stands before her, rage on his weathered face, power surging through his fingertips. She’s going to kill him too. Tightening her grip on the lightsaber, she leaves Skywalker’s side to stride toward the dais. 

C’baoth brings the roof down on her. Small, jagged rocks hail down on her and Skywalker, pelting them from above, each tiny impact biting into her skin. Through the downfall, Mara sees Asyr dart up to Sofonisba and slash the tusk cat across the face before the larger feline can react. With a roar, Sofonisba lunges for him, but Asyr is already gone, racing off into the shadows, the tusk cat in pursuit. They disappear into the corridors that wind through the mountain fortress. 

The deluge of stones gets thicker the harder Mara struggles to reach the dais. She can barely see through the thick dust swirling around her, staggering and sliding over the heaps of rubble between her and C'baoth. A large rock grazes the side of her head and glances off her shoulder and Mara nearly goes down, the pain blurring her vision. She hears C’baoth’s mad ranting and the crack of lightning as he strikes at Luke, but she can’t see more than a few inches in front of her face. 

Something large brushes her side. She reaches down and catches hold of a thick coat of fur. Miré. The wolf leads her forward through the storm of stones, until her foot thwacks against the steps at the bottom of the dais. Lifting a hand, she can feel the edge of the waterfall of debris, cutting off abruptly where the stairs rise to the throne. 

She lets go of Miré and steps through. The air is clear on the other side, her path to C’baoth unobstructed. He turns toward her as she takes the stairs, lightning erupting from his fingertips. She manages to deflect the burst of lighting with the lightsaber, but the force of the strike knocks her to her knees, pain jolting up her legs at the impact. 

There’s a sudden quiet as the roar of the rockfall ceases, then C’baoth lifts a layer of stones from the floor into the air. They hover for a moment and then fly toward her, whipping around in a whirlwind of shrapnel. It’s not as dense as the rockfall, and through the tornado she can see C’baoth’s gaze flick away from her toward the level below. 

Asyr scurries out from the darkened corridors behind the dais, leaping over the rubble left by the rockfall. Sofonisba lopes behind him, her movements unhurried and expression smug. She knows that Asyr is too worn out to fight her now. He pauses in the middle of the floor, panting heavily and hissing at her between breaths. 

C’baoth raises a hand toward the dæmons, lightning beginning to spark at his fingertips, but before he can strike out at Asyr, Mara surges forward, flinging herself out of the stone cyclone. C’baoth’s head snaps back in her direction—too late. Mara drives the lightsaber into his chest. 

It kills him instantly. She can hear a gasp from behind her as Sofonisba blinks out of existence. There’s no time to brace for the violent burst of dark side energy that explodes from C’baoth’s body in a deafening roar. Mara feels herself thrown backward, and everything goes black. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vornskr and ysalamiri are unique animals to native Myrkr. [Ysalsmiri](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ysalamir) alter a Force user’s perception of the Force, creating a Force-null “bubble.” [Vornskr](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Vornskr) can sense Force users and, unless domesticated, will hunt and kill them.
> 
> Thrawn, though he only appears in flashback, has a Csilla frost viper, a type of snake I just made up. 
> 
> Sofonisba is a [tusk cat.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tusk_cat)


	5. Chapter 5

Mara’s face is peaceful as she floats in green-tinted bacta, her hair a dark cloud shifting around her head, occasionally obscuring her features. 

The medical bay in the  Wild Karrde is small and cramped, though it does have a standing bacta unit. The unit, clamped against a wall in a small semi-enclosed area extending from a corner of the med bay, is large enough for a single person. A ladder runs up the side of the room to a catwalk above the unit, a hover stretcher attached to the catwalk for lowering a patient to the floor below. 

Asyr stalks back and forth in the space in front of the tank, hackles raised. Luke tries to remain inconspicuous as possible, his back pressed up against the opposite wall, his eyes never leaving Mara for long. When the medic, Annowiskri, attempts to approach the monitors on the side of the tank, Asyr goes still, growling low in his throat, his unnerving green eyes fixed on the medic. Miré leaps up from her spot crouched at Luke’s feet and puts her body between Asyr and Annowiskri, herding the dæmon back. 

“Back off, you—you desert bitch!” Asyr screeches. Miré snaps at him, a decisive click of her powerful jaw that startles the felinx. Asyr hunches down in a corner, still rumbling discontentedly. 

Once Annowiskri has checked the readings and turned away, Miré stretches out in front of the tank, so that her body rests between Mara and anyone else who might approach. Asyr flees up the ladder and crouches on the catwalk above the tank. 

“Readings are very good,” Annowiskri says. His dæmon, a shaupaut, leans over his shoulder, nose twitching as she examines the readings herself. “We’ll pull her out in fifteen.” After a moment, as though he’d just remembered, he asks, “anything I can get for you?” His eyes flick down to the bandages that cover Luke’s hands and disappear up the sleeves of his robe. Annowiskri reminds Luke of some of the medics who had served in the Rebellion, the type who knew every possible way to treat a blaster wound, but wouldn’t last a day within the strict structure of an Imperial hospital. 

“No, thanks.” He’s already been slathered in bacta gel and has promised Leia that he’ll go into a healing trance to take care of the rest of his injuries. He just didn’t tell her he wasn’t planning to go into his trance until Mara woke up. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d stood by a bacta tank while Mara floated insensible behind the transparisteel; he’d done the same after the battle for the Katana. Guilt, heavy as a stone, is lodged deep in his chest, keeping him haunting whatever medcenter she ends up in. Twice in a matter of months is too many times. At least this time he hadn’t pulled her body, half-dead, out of the ruin of a shattered ejection seat. It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat ever again. 

Fifteen minutes pass. Luke watches the tip of Asyr’s tail flick back and forth ceaselessly as they all keep vigil by Mara’s side. Miré’s eyes sink to slits but Luke can tell that she’s still alert to any possible threat, as unlikely as that may be. They’re safe now, even if none of them will relax until Mara is out of the tank. 

“She’s coming ‘round,” Annowiskri says, pleased, when he comes back to check the monitor. On the other side of the transparisteel Mara blinks, her eyes unfocused and unseeing. 

“Can I pull her out?” Luke asks. 

The medic gives him a sidelong glance. “You know what to do?” 

“Yes,” Luke says. “When I was in the Rebellion, I took a full course of battlefield first aid—”

Annowiskri waves a hand, cutting him off. “Sure, sure.” He looks up at Asyr, still crouched on the catwalk and shrugs, a  better you than me  gesture. 

As Annowiskri watches the monitor, Luke climbs up the ladder and edges past Asyr. He pulls the hover stretcher down from a hook on the wall and lines it up with the side of the catwalk, before he kneels at the edge of the tank. 

Asyr crowds close, pushing into his side, leaning as far over the edge of the tank as he can manage. Luke stiffens for a moment. Asyr must still be agitated if he allows Luke to touch him at all, even incidentally. Leaning away from the dameon, Luke reaches down into the tank and starts to draw up the tether attached to Mara. Mara’s arms are already raised to the surface, her hands catching hold of his and gripping tight. As soon as her head is above water, he detaches the medical device around her waist, leaving it to bob in the tank. 

She clings to his arms as he maneuvers her over the lip of the tank and onto the catwalk. He hooks an arm around her waist to hold her up as he gently removes the breather strapped to her face. Mara gasps, sucking in a lungful of ship air. 

“Asyr,” she protests weakly as her dæmon cleans the bacta from her face with rigorous strokes of his rough tongue. Her hair is plastered to her head and streaks her face in thin, dark ribbons. Luke brushes it back on the side Asyr isn’t tending and tries not to look at the way her wet underclothes cling to her skin. 

“I got him, didn’t I?” 

“You did,” Luke says. 

“Good.” She licks bacta from her lips. “Karrde?” There's a vulnerable crack in her voice, which she covers by asking the next set of questions. “Your sister? And Solo?” 

“They’re fine. Everyone’s fine. We’ve all been treated for burns and minor injuries. Leia and Han are resting on the Falcon.” There wasn’t much to do for a pair of concussions but rest. “Karrde’s prepping the  Wild Karrde to head back to Coruscant. Even the vornskrs are going to be okay.” 

“Good.” She closes her eyes, head dropping back and settling on his shoulder. 

“I killed you,” she says, her voice almost inaudible. 

“I’m still here,” he says. “Not me at all, really.” 

“It was good enough,” she whispers. “He’s out of my head.” 

“Oh,” he says weakly. “Oh, Mara.” 

“We’re free,” Asyr says, his voice as soft as hers. 

There’s a clatter behind them as Miré leaps up the side of the ladder and onto the far end of the catwalk. Luke braces Mara as the entire structure shakes and creaks under the added weight and Asyr hisses at Miré, his eyes narrow. She ignores him and shoves herself up against Luke’s side, her long face against his neck. 

“Okay, Miré,” Luke laughs. “We’ll come down now.” 

Asyr slips like liquid onto the hover stretcher and stretches along the far side. There are rails along the edge so that Mara won’t fall off, but Asyr will ensure it. After Luke’s helped Mara onto the stretcher, Miré follows, covering the other side. The stretcher rocks under her weight. 

“Miré,” Luke says in exasperation. 

“I’m not going back down that ladder,” she says. 

“Okay, fine.” It only takes a minute for the stretcher to lower to the floor below, and it’s not worth taking the time to argue her off again. 

Miré holds absolutely still so that Mara won’t brush up against her side as the stretcher lowers to the floor, and remains on the stretcher until Mara is standing on her own feet again. Miré doesn’t move until Annowiskri returns and ushers Mara and Asyr into the exam room. 

After coming down the ladder, Luke crouches down and leans his head against Miré’s ruff, sighing. “Han’s going to make so many snide comments about me and red-headed women with feline dæmons.” 

Instead of laughing, Miré bares her teeth. “If he does, I’ll speak to Asta.” 

His heart lurches. Without even discussing it, he knows that Miré already considers Mara under her protection.  Part of her pack, as Han calls it. 

Oh,  Luke thinks.  Oh, I’m in trouble.

* * *

“Come with me,” Luke says. 

Blue light from the holo of Lothal dances across his face, turning his eyes an even deeper shade of blue as he tries to catch her gaze. The translucent planet and its satellites rotate slowly between them, the projector perched on the edge of the table in Luke’s sitting room. Mara looks past Luke, through the window behind him. She can see the Coruscant skyline glittering through the shimmering spheres of Lothal’s moons. She’d never been taught much affection for her home planet, but she still feels reassured by the slender lines of the cloud cutters against the night sky. 

“I can’t,” Mara says. “Karrde needs me.” Even as the words tumble out, she knows that they aren’t strictly true. Nothing had been the same since she’d woken up on the  Karrde after Wayland. 

Mara had spent the flight from Wayland to Coruscant in the  Karrde’s medbay, and then wasted a long afternoon in a hospital after they’d landed before being cleared to leave. Karrde gave her the access codes to an apartment of her own, even though Leia offered to find a place for her in the Palace. 

The following days—long, excruciatingly tedious days—were spent debriefing the Provisional Council on the events that took place on Wayland. Every member of the team testifies, even Karrde. Mara doesn’t know what to feel when each one of them commends her actions during the assault on the mountain fortress and during the battle with C’baoth. 

“The New Republic thanks you for your service,” Mon Mothma says in her soft, musical voice, and Mara almost laughs at the absurdity of  Mon Mothma thanking her. The Chandrilian chameleon snake draped over Mothma’s shoulders, still as a marble sculpture, lifts his head and flicks his tongue in Mara’s direction. A turquoise flush ripples over his pearly scales and vanishes again. Mara doesn’t know what that means. Snakes are considered a symbol of wisdom on Chandrila; Mara was seventeen when the galaxy learned that the chameleon snake is a symbol of deception as well. 

A smaller selection of Councilors is present when Mara is interrogated— interviewed, Leia insists—about her role as the Emperor’s Hand. They tell her the debriefing is the interest of full disclosure and to set aside any doubts about her past—or whatever, Mara doesn’t care what the Provisional Council has to say to themselves to justify their actions. In the interest of keeping them from arresting her again, she agrees. She requests that Karrde be present—if only to save him the trouble of slicing into the file later. 

She tells them everything; confesses every crime, names every accomplice. She speaks for hours, until her throat grows rough with use, and it feels as though she’s scraped every secret Palpatine had given her out of the all dark corners in her head. When the interrogation is over, the files are sealed and Mara is declared a citizen of the New Republic. 

Now what? she thinks as she runs her finger over her new identichip. On the intitichip’s file, face and her name—the only name she can remember being given—hover below the official seal of the New Republic. Mara Jade of Coruscant, night felinx dæmon Asyr, born 17 ABY, citizen of the New Republic. 

When she speaks with Karrde, the conversation turns to his plans to develop the Smuggler’s Alliance into a fully-fledged organization, with permanent ties to the New Republic. After their part in defeating Thrawn at Bilbringi, Karrde only sees possibilities for the Alliance to grow. She can sense him shifting things around as he shapes his kingdom to fit its new role in a changed galaxy. 

She doesn't have a place in Karrde’s organization anymore. In her absence, other operatives have taken over her duties, and some of the older hands haven’t forgiven her for her part in Thrawn’s capture of Karrde and for dragging them all into the New Republic’s war. 

Her new role, it seems, is to remain on Coruscant. To work alongside the New Republic and the Smuggler’s Alliance—if it lasts. The lengthy post-Wayland debriefs transition into meetings with trade ministers and sector representatives. Otherwise, her time is her own, and Mara isn’t sure what she’s meant to do with herself. Karrde is no help at all. 

No matter what plans she lays, or arrangements she makes, no matter what distractions the city planet has to offer, she always seems to end up in Skywalker— Luke’s orbit. It isn’t like she’s on friendly terms with anyone on Coruscant who  isn’t in his tight-knit little circle.

There’s no one else who can help her sort through the mess in her head after Wayland, and Luke guides her through a series of meditations until she starts to feel…  steady again. He’s the only one who can continue with the training they started on Wayland, lessons in levitation and shielding, on lightsaber technique and defense. 

And then eventually, she finds herself staying for dinners that Luke cooks for them in his apartment in the Palace. It’s awkward at first. Mara expects a trap of some sort; for him to demand she answers questions about her past that she isn’t prepared to acknowledge. 

She didn’t expect the trap to come in the form of a request. 

“Besides,” she says, looking up from the holo, “if these reports are right, the Jedi temple isn’t even there anymore.” 

“But there has to be  something. If there was a temple there once, there might be traces of it in the Force that we could sense, and I think that’s worth a look, don’t you?” 

Mara shrugs a shoulder. He’s all eager anticipation, his face so open and earnest she has to look away. Her gaze drifts over the forms of their dæmons on the other end of the room. They’re stretched out on the floor alongside each other, like parallel stone tusk cats guarding a building. From time to time, they bend their heads together and murmur, so softly that Luke and Mara can’t hear them. 

Mara glances away. Her fingers itch every time she looks at Miré. If her head hadn’t been such a kriffing mess on Wayland, she wouldn’t have grabbed hold of Miré in the middle of the Force storm. It was the grossest breach of conduct—even in the chaos of a battle, she  never should have touched Luke’s dæmon. The last time that someone touched Asyr—she can still recall the black glove fisting in Asyr’s fur, the way it made her feel as if everything had been stripped away from her, leaving her weak and exposed.  Violated.

When she looks back at the holo of Lothal, Luke is still watching at her, as if a hopeful expression will change her answer. 

“I can’t just go tramping off to some outer rim planet just on a rumor,” she says. “I have commitments.” 

Luke’s face slides into unconcealed disappointment. “Okay,” he says. “The offer’s still open, if…” He trails off, his eyes on her belt, where a lightsaber hangs. 

The lightsaber that he gave her on the roof of the Palace; his first lightsaber, and his father’s before him. Some days it feels heavy as an anchor; other days it sings under her hands as she moves through a training sequence. When Luke’s eyes flick up to hers again she feels something swarm up into her throat and sit, coiled at the back of her mouth.  Trap trap trap trap, her mind screams. 

“...If you change your mind,” he finishes. 

“Sure, farmboy,” she tosses back. The epithet is meant to sound flippant, dismissive, but he grins at her, flashing a smile digs into her like shrapnel. She has to get out of there before she does something desperate. 

“I have to go,” she says, rising so abruptly that Miré and Asyr jerk their heads up at the same moment. 

She has to get away—back to her own apartment, where she can ignore the way he looks at her in the evenings; she can ignore the strange energy that crackles between them and sends shudders down her spine. 

In the turbolift to her rented speeder, Asyr casts a weighted look in her direction. Mara knows that expression. She glares at him. 

“I don’t want to fuck him,” she snarls. “I don’t even like him.” 

“Right,” Asyr says, flicking the tip of his tail. 

The rest of the trip back to her apartment is spent in stony silence. 

* * *

Even though he can always draw on the Force or meditate to center himself when his brain feels snarled up, there are times when Luke prefers other methods. Working up a sweat in the gym, or running lightsaber drills over and over—these things help. Other times what he needs is a fast engine thrumming under him and the open sky ahead. 

One of the first things Luke had bought after he’d moved into his apartment in the Palace was a speeder—sleek and fast—an indulgence he could afford for the first time in his life. The body of the speeder is dark green, the color of a Yavin forest at dusk. Designed for a single pilot with a padded scoop seat on the right, sized for a large dæmon. 

Luke takes a route that leads him through the canyons of the city, bypassing the high-speed traffic lanes for lower, lawless regions where speed limits are considered something that only the upper-level well-to-do can afford. Luke slaloms through a maze of structures and vehicles at speeds as reckless as his own, letting the Force guide his hand on the wheel. 

He eventually ends up at Han and Leia’s apartment—their new apartment, in a new cloudcutter situated what Han considers a “safe distance” from the Palace and Senate District. The door opens when he keys in his personal code, but only Kian and Asta are there to greet him and Miré when they cross the threshold. The other dæmons can’t move far from Han and Leia, so Miré meets them at the end of the living room closest to the master bedroom. The three dæmons scuffle in an ungainly pile of limbs and fur, while Luke takes a seat at the living room’s conversation circle, watching the dæmons play. 

When they finally break apart, Asta trots over to Luke. “Leia’s feeding the twins and Han’s napping.” Most dæmons who haven’t gone through separation sleep when their humans are asleep, but Asta trained herself to stay awake and alert when they slept on the streets of Corellia when they were young. 

Leia and Kian tried to pick up the habit after they met Han, though she never fully mastered the practice. She doesn’t want to go through separation either, and Luke hasn’t pressed the issue. If he can get her to complete her Jedi training, someday, maybe. He has to admit to himself that ever since Mara came into his life he hasn’t spent much time worrying about Leia’s lapsed practice or his anxiety over teaching the next generation of Jedi. Other things have been on his mind. 

Asta tilts her head. “What’s bothering you?” 

Most dæmons don’t speak to other humans beyond relaying information in specific situations; in cases where their human is injured or needs help. Asta has never paid much attention to that particular taboo and Kian was his soul’s twin. Luke has always felt comfortable talking with both of them, and Han and Leia don’t seem to mind. 

The other two dæmons flop down on either side of Asta, facing Luke as he sits in his chair. “Mara,” Miré says for him, and Luke shoots her a mock-betrayed look. 

Asta’s ears perk up. “Oh? Really?” 

“I invited her to come with me to search for the Jedi temple on Lothal,” Luke says. “I thought it would be a good chance for us to train together… but she said no.” 

“She just got over wanting to kill you,” Asta points out, ear cocked like a raised eyebrow. “Might make a girl a little skittish about running off to some Outer Rim planet with you.” 

“I… know,” Luke says. “I was just hoping that after… After everything we’ve been through together, she might be interested in looking for the temple. She has a right to the heritage of the Jedi as well, and she would be a magnificent Jedi—if she stayed and completed her training. She has so much potential, and there’s so much we could teach each other.” He realizes that he’s rambling; that he could happily ramble about Mara for hours. The trip to Lothal, which had seemed so promising when he’d first started planning, just won’t be the same without her. 

He puts his head and his hands and mumbles, “I think I’m a little in love with her.” 

Asta makes a choking sound and Kian snorts. He looks up to see the dæmons all exchanging weighted glances. 

“Don’t compare this to Gariel, or Teneniel—” he says. 

“Wasn’t going to,” Asta snaps, turning her head to the side. The way she looks at him out of one eye suggests that her statement isn’t entirely true. 

“Asyr knows,” Miré says. All eyes turn toward her. “Or suspects. Even if Mara won’t admit it to herself.” 

“Everything I do or say—” Luke says. “It feels like one step forward and two steps back.” 

“They’ve been hurt,” Kian says, his low voice a deep rumble. “You need to take things slowly.” 

He doesn’t  want  to go slow. It feels like he’s been waiting for decades for Mara, longing for her, dreaming about her—but doesn’t want to hurt her either. He’d cut off his own hand first. 

Kian yawns. Leia must be getting tired. 

“I’ll go,” Luke says. “Let Leia and Han know I stopped by.” He doesn’t need to bother them now, and Kian and Asta will relay their conversation to Leia and Han. They need their rest. “Thank you for listening.” 

Kian yawns again. 

Asta snorts. “Babies are exhausting,” she says. 

Luke excuses himself, and he and Miré head home as the sun slips down between the spires of the city, the sky taking on a peachy-orange glow. His apartment feels emptier without Mara and Asyr in it. 

* * *

Mara shifts her grip on the thick lightsaber in her hand, the blade giving off a humming whine as it cuts through the air. A laugh escapes her as a bolt screams past her shoulder, searing through the spot where she’d been standing seconds before. She completes her spin, bringing her lightsaber up to meet the next strike. 

She can’t see the bolts, or the remote that spits them in her direction on a randomizer. A blindfold wrapped over her eyes keeps her in the dark, the Force guiding her hands. She can’t see where the remote darts next, but she can sense its path through the air, and the low-energy bolts hiss as they meet the edge of her lightsaber. 

Even though she can’t see them, she knows that Luke is watching, leaning against the far wall, Miré at his side, Asyr prowling and switching his tail as he paces the length of the room. Sitting on the sidelines as she bats down bolt after bolt has made him restless. 

She knows what Asyr intends to do even before she hears his yowl, and she yanks down the blindfold in time to see him leap up and snatch the remote out of the air. It lands with a thunk on the floor and deactivates. 

Mara smirks at Luke’s nonplussed expression. “I guess we’re done for the day,” he says as Asyr stalks out the door. 

His confusion clears when he looks up at her again, and she’s reminded once again of the sun breaking through a shadow. He’s been more subdued since she turned down his proposed trip to Lothal, but there’s no trace of disappointment on his face now. 

She stretches, arms looped over her head, and his gaze skitters over and and away, a flush tingeing his cheeks. Mara pretends not to notice, but there’s a moment when her breath stutters in her chest, as she fails to keep from admiring his lean form in return. 

Then it passes, and Mara follows him out of the spare room in his apartment that he’d converted into a private space for meditation—and, in this case, remote practice—and into the airy living room. 

She turns to ask him a question about her form as Asyr brushes against her side, and Mara drops a hand to his back. She freezes, her mouth dropping open. The fur under her fingers is long and thick— wrong. Miré. She’s touching  Miré.

Mara jerks her hand away and staggers back, feeling the blood drain from her face. “Kriff. Kriff, I’m sorry.” 

“Mara.” Luke reaches across and catches her elbow, steadying her, not ensnaring. His thumb brushes rhythmically against her arm. “It’s okay.” 

“No, it’s not,” Mara snaps. “I shouldn’t have touched her—it was inexcusable. I shouldn’t have touched her on Wayland either.” 

“You were fighting for your life,” Luke says, his voice calm. “You were fighting for all of us. Miré understands that. Things happen in battles, anyway. Miré’s used to it.” 

Mara shakes her head. “No. It’s an unforgivable violation...” How can he be so  calm?

“Mara, I don’t mind if you touch Miré.” 

The words coming out of his mouth are incomprehensible and Mara stares at him as though he just spoke in Jawaese.  He doesn’t mind if she touches Miré? 

Luke takes a step closer to her, and then another step closer, until she can feel the heat of his body seeping across the narrow space between them. Her head tilts up to meet his gaze. His eyes are so blue . 

She breaks eye contact, jerking her head away. 

Asyr saunters up to Miré and butts his head under Miré’s chin, stroking his head against hers. Mara senses more than sees a shiver run through Luke. Miré holds still as Asyr rubs the length of his body along hers, circling her once and returning to nuzzle at her jaw. Miré hooks a paw around Asyr and buries her nose into his neck, grooming his fur with gentle tugs of her teeth. The feeling that surges through Mara is swooping, heady, a rush of heat that sets every nerve alight. 

It’s unwelcome. 

No one ever touches Asyr except her.  No one. Whenever Mara had been intimate in the past, Asyr wouldn’t even let her partner’s  dæmon get close, arching his back and baring his teeth at any that dared to approach. 

She expects the same expression of horror on her face to be reflected on Luke’s, but when she looks at him, his face is tight with longing, desire written all over his features. His eyes flick to her lips and she wants to punch his mouth bloody. 

“Mara,” he breathes, and the way he says her name makes her want to climb inside of him; let him do things to her that she’s never let anyone else do. She lets him lean in, press his lips to hers, coax her mouth open under his. Her hands clench in his shirt, drag him closer. His hands alight at her hips, stoke soothingly along her sides, skate up her back and into her hair. She feels fingers tug at her braid until her hair falls loose. 

The kiss turns frantic and filthy. 

Mara’s hips jerk into his and she gasps, breaking away. Over Luke’s shoulder, she can see their dæmons together. Miré and Asyr are tussling playfully now, and she can sense affection, raw and terrible, pouring off of them. 

“Mara,” Luke’s voice again, heavy with wanting. 

She doesn’t remember crossing the room; only a blur of impressions swamped by the wave of arousal breaking over her carefully constructed walls. Luke’s hands burrowing under her shirt to stroke bare skin—the faint stubble on his jaw catching along her fingertips—the sound she makes as he bites down on her lip—falling together in a tangle onto the couch. 

They’ve both lost their shirts and shoes and her hands skate over the warm planes of his chest. Luke is sprawled over her, hard against her hip, the heat of his mouth traveling up her neck. She moans as the edge of his teeth scrape along her earlobe. 

It’s too much. 

The moan melts into a whimper when he pulls his mouth away from her neck and leans back. She can see reservation creep on to his features as he brushes a lock of hair out of her face. “Do—do you want to stop?” 

They can both hear the rumble of Asyr’s purr across the room. It’s answer enough. 

Mara fumbles at the fastening of his pants, breathing heavily. She wants him inside of her— now. Wants him to rut into her until she can’t remember her own name. 

“Don’t stop,” she growls. “Don’t stop.” 

* * *

Luke wakes to a warm weight on his chest, and when he takes a deep breath the weight begins to vibrate with a low, soothing rumble. A purr. Asyr is purring, his head and forelegs resting on Luke’s chest, the rest of his body draped down his side and tucked into the hollow between Luke and Mara. Mara’s back is turned away, her hair a fiery waterfall over his pillow. When he lifts his head he can see Miré’s bulk over Mara’s shoulder. 

When he picked out this particular apartment in the Palace residential floors, he made sure it had a bed large enough for himself and Miré. It’s not quite large enough to comfortably fit two adult humans and two large dæmons, though for the moment, Luke doesn’t mind the close quarters. 

He didn’t plan this, he thinks, but a burst of joy floods his chest under Asyr’s head. The felinx’s ear twitches, and he shifts his weight as though to rise and move away—and then he goes limp as though it wasn’t worth the effort. 

With a low grumble the felinx’s head turns, green eyes blinking open and meeting Luke’s. Luke wants to stroke those midnight black ears, but he remembers Mara’s horror and disgust when she touched Miré and he keeps his hands to himself. Asyr blinks slowly at him, and resumes purring. 

Luke hears Mara’s gasp a moment before she’s in motion, throwing herself backwards into his side. Asyr yelps as Mara dislodges him. 

“Mara?” 

Somehow she scrambles off the end of the bed without making contact with him or Miré, and that’s when he realizes what just happened. Mara had woken up and found Miré cuddled up to her, and she hadn’t taken the close proximity of his dæmon well. The door of the fresher attached to the bedroom snaps shut. 

Kian had  warned him to tread carefully, and he’d jumped into bed with her the moment the opportunity had presented itself. Luke echoes the curse she had hissed as she jerked away from Miré. His dæmon gives him a sheepish look. 

He rolls out of bed and pulls on a shirt, tossed over a cabinet, before tapping on the door of the fresher. “Mara? Are you okay?” 

“Fine,” he hears her bite out. She doesn’t elaborate. He can feel all the lightness in his chest sink down to the floor beneath his feet. This wasn’t a mistake—was it? He should have talked to her first, should have established boundaries and stuck with them, no matter how much he wanted her to touch him. 

“Okay.” he brushes his fingers against the closed door and then drops his hand. “I’ll make breakfast. Come out whenever you’re ready.” 

She doesn’t stay for breakfast. 

* * *

There are parts of the Imperial Palace that Mara doesn’t recognize any more. Entire floors renovated to suit the needs of an infant government and its new fleet of representatives, aides, civil servants and flimsy-work pushers. While the residential wing remains largely the same as it did during the age of the Republic, Mara finds that floors she once knew by heart are now unrecognizable, halls taking new directions, rooms arranged into unexpected configurations. 

(She could find Luke’s apartment blindfolded. If she went back there—and if he looks at her the way he looked at her that night, she’d fall right back into his bed. 

She stays away). 

She has an appointment with Winter Retrac to go over some recovered intel in the new offices of New Republic Intelligence—the prospect of reminding NRI of her existence makes her uneasy, despite the fact that her past deeds were pardoned—but she finds herself turning onto a hall still half-under construction, white sheets hanging like veils and cleaning droids shuffling about. This hall doesn’t lead to where she needs to be, but she  knows this floor, her memory layered over the unfamiliar halls like a holo shifting out of focus. Instead of retracing her steps and trying another route to the NRI offices, she pushes forward, following the memory. Past the active construction, the halls take on a familiar shape, instinct tugging her forward, Asyr at her heels. 

A hastily built barrier blocks their way, but Mara ignores the warnings splashed over the front and edges around it into the corridor. She  knows she’s been here before, even if she can’t quite place it. It tugs at the edge of her mind. 

Asyr freezes as they reach a doorway that towers over their head, the opening like a black mouth. Without a word, he sinks low to the ground, the fur along his back raised in a prickly spine. Yowling unhappily, he refuses to cross the threshold. 

Mara ignores him, too caught up in the urge to see where her half-memory leads, and steps through the door. Lights activate, illuminating the long hall and making the white veins in the marble floor glimmer. Her heart begins to pound as her feet carry her forward. 

When the Emperor had been alive, this had been the Silver Throne Room. The marble floor and the long, narrow sweep of the hall are unmistakable, even though the throne itself is gone and the lintel above the door stripped bare of the grotesque silver archway. Her heart begins to hammer in her chest. 

It’s only an empty room,  Mara tells herself, willing herself forward. Her master is dead, Vader is dead.  Empty, empty, empty —cold hits her halfway across the floor, fear and rage curling around her like a noose. She sags where she stands and drops to her hand and knees, strength sapped from her as if Vader still held Asyr in his fist. Pain pools out from under her hands, spreading in a black stain against the cold marble floor. Despair hangs in the air so thick it leaves a metallic taste at the back of her throat. 

The hope that killing the clone and his master would exorcise her master from her head sputters in her chest. All she has to feel is an echo of his presence and it renders her helpless again. Pathetic. 

Broken. 

She isn’t sure how long she sits there, frozen in the place where her bond to Asyr was nearly broken. Time seems to drag, thick and heavy, until she hears nails clicking on the marble behind her, and a familiar presence drawing near. 

Not Asyr. 

“Miré?” It comes out in a whisper. 

“Asyr found us,” Miré says as she reaches the edge of Mara’s vision. “Luke is trying to calm him down. I tracked him back here.” A shudder travels along the big wolf’s back. “This is the place, isn’t it?” 

“Yes,” Mara breathes. 

Miré steps in front of her. “Whatever happened here, it’s over,” she says firmly, bending her head to look Mara in the eyes. 

Mara flinches as Miré licks her cheek; sits motionless as Miré nuzzles her face and neck. Instinctually, she reaches for Miré, her hand wavering in midair for a moment before continuing up to sink into Miré’s fur. It’s dense and thick, soft under her fingers. 

“The only other times I ever touched a dæmon,” Mara begins falteringly, “was to hurt them and their human.” She pulls her hand away. “Sometimes Asyr killed their dæmons. It feels...bad—when he kills them. But—we did it anyway.” 

“You did what your master made you do,” Miré says, her eyes grave. 

“I still have dreams about killing Luke,” Mara says. There’s a horrible weight like a block of ice in her chest. “I know it isn’t him, but I—he falls at my feet and I watch him die.” 

“We have dreams, too,” Miré says. “Most of the time they’re only dreams.” 

Mara looks down at her hands again, clenching against her thighs. “Skywalker deserves better.” 

“We want  you.”  Miré steps closer, laying her big head on Mara’s shoulder in what would be an embrace if she were human-formed. Mara gives in and leans her head against the warm fur. 

They both sense Luke’s arrival before he appears in the frame of the doorway. Mara hears him suck in a sharp breath and knows that he can feel the same echo of her and Asyr’s pain heavy in the air. 

“Leia called it an emotional bloodstain,” she says. “She felt it on Endor.” 

“She told me,” Luke says quietly. “I’ve experienced it too. Places where a powerful Darksider died, or a traumatic event took place. It...lingers.”

“He stood there and watched as Vader— dragged us apart.” Her voice cracks on the word. 

Miré circles behind her and sinks down on the marble, the curve of her crouched body protecting Mara’s back. 

“Miré and I did it to ourselves,” Luke says. “It was a stupid thing to try— reckless.” He shakes his head with a humorless chuckle and moves to sit in front of her, blocking her view of the space where the Emperor had stood. “But it was our choice. It didn’t break us, and it didn’t break you either. You  survived.”

“I nearly died when my—“ Mara chokes on the word  master . “When he died. I was unconscious for days, and when I woke up...” She takes a long, shuddering breath. “I wanted to die.” 

He takes her hand in both of his, cradling it between his fingers. 

“I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Mara continues. “And then his voice came back, commanding me to kill you.” She squeezes her eyes shut. The memory is so close she can hear the echo of the command ringing through her mind. “I thought—I  hoped it was over. That it would be over once I killed you. Another version of you.” 

“It’s not that simple.” He brushes a wisp of hair away from her face, his fingers caressing her cheek. “Healing never is.” 

“I don’t know…” She can’t even complete the thought. Can’t think past the fear that this is all there is: the Emperor’s will slowly eroding her mind, bit by bit, until she’s reduced to the thing she was in Isard’s cells, blind and half-mad with pain. 

Mire asks, “do you want to be a Jedi?” 

Mara stares at Miré, surprised by the question. “Yes.” It gasps out of her. “I do.” 

The Force calls to her, sings to her—a song of life, of purpose, of belonging. How has she resisted it for so long? 

“The Force will be with you,” Miré says solemnly. 

A disbelieving laugh hiccups out of her. “I don’t know if I’m… enough—” She isn’t sure how to get the next set of words out past the snarl in her throat. 

“Oh,” Luke says, his voice soft with surprise. “You are. You’re  Mara Jade.” He says the words so surely, as if speaking an implacable truth. 

The hollow room around them is so  cold and Luke—Luke is the molten core of a star. 

She falls into him, her mouth meeting his, one hand fisting in his shirt, the other splayed over his heart. His hand comes up to cup her face as he kisses her back. 

After a few heated moments, Luke breaks away, head jerking back and eyes searching hers. “Mara. Not here.” His hands come up and cover hers. “Not here—but. Back at my place?” 

“Yes,” she says. “Yes. I want you.” 

The smile on his face is like sunshine breaking through a fog. He kisses her again before he pulls her to her feet. “Let’s go find Asyr.” 

His hand wraps around hers as he turns toward the door. Miré brushes up against Mara’s other side and places herself under the hand that Luke isn’t holding. 

Like on Endor, where the Emperor’s death had left a black stain in the sky, the cold seeps into her bones—and then it’s gone. Mara can breathe again. She can hear Luke’s breath catch beside her, hear Miré’s sigh, sense Asyr’s relief as he reaches out for her through the Force. She leaves the throne room behind, and she doesn’t look back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annowiskri’s dæmon is a [shaupaut.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Shaupaut)
> 
> I made up Chandrilian chameleon snakes. They sound cool, don’t they? Mood ring snakes! 
> 
> I've started a series of side stories set in this universe as well! The collection is called "Traces of Light." The first story, _Tripwire,_ about Mara's rocky start in Karrde's organization, is already up, and a Karrde will follow soon.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Animalis_ is from the Latin anima, meaning “having breath” or “soul.” 
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr @celinamarniss

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Artwork for Luminous Creatures](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23941183) by [Lightningecho_s_path](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightningecho_s_path/pseuds/Lightningecho_s_path)
  * [Good Dog](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24818056) by [kate_fire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_fire/pseuds/kate_fire)




End file.
